The Elfin Ship (3 page)

The hour finally arrived for Jonathan Bing to turn the lamp down, bolt the door, and crawl into bed. Ahab elected to spend the night on his pillow by the embers of the fire and was lost immediately in his dreams.

Ahab awoke before Jonathan did because the fire had burned itself out, and the morning was frightfully cold. Jonathan was covered with blankets topped by a feather comforter that came up to his chin and covered his bed all the way to the floor. He wore his cloth nightcap and striped nightshirt and, all in all, he was as warm as a honeycake in a dwarf’s oven. Ahab climbed onto the bed and began burrowing beneath the covers pretending to search for some lost object. Awaking with a shout at the sudden cold thing that had crept into his bed, Jonathan slid over far to one side and let Ahab have the other.

He couldn’t fall asleep again, however, because of the ticking of his pocketwatch which lay nearby on the table. The harder he tried to ignore the noise, the louder it seemed to be. Then the bottom of his foot, which should have been feeling warm and content, began to itch and no mere scratching would suffice; it wanted to be up and about. But Jonathan was far too snug for any such foolishness. Then just when he’d managed to ignore the pocketwatch and the itch in his foot, Ahab set in to snore like a grizzly bear and began to flail his legs about. He was lost in a very active dream in which he seemed to be chasing a boatload of funny little men wearing tall hats along the banks of a river.

Jonathan, in a rage – not a wild rage, but one of those mild, morning rages – flew out of bed. Just as well, for the bells in the village struck seven times, and if he wished to be at the Guildhall by eight-thirty and have a load of cheeses with him to boot, he’d best make tracks.

His first duty each morning was to put the coffee on the stove. He ground a handful of dark, oily coffee beans, measured out a third of a cup of grounds, and threw them into the bottom of a porcelain-coated coffee pot which he filled three-fourths to the top with cold water. Jonathan then set about boiling another pan of water for oatmeal porridge and slicing wheat bread for toast. Soon the coffee water started to bubble and steam, and when it was just set to boil he took the pot off the stove to let the coffee steep. Its rich smell filled the kitchen, and there was nothing for it but that Jonathan should have a cup at once. As he was enjoying his toast and porridge and peach jam and sugared coffee, Ahab wandered in from the bedroom. Barely awake, he stretched deeply and stood by the table eyeing the slices of buttered toast. Jonathan tore off a piece, smeared a dab of jam on it, and tossed it to Ahab, who found the morsel very good indeed. Together, they decided on having another.

Breakfast finished, Jonathan trudged up the gravel path to the cheesehouse and pulled his wagon out from beneath its covering. With Ahab trotting alongside or resting now and again just inside the door, Jonathan carried out some two or three dozen cheeses of various shapes and sizes including a half dozen crocks of creamed cheese and three of the round swirly cheeses that he and the mayor had picked at the night before. Goat’s milk cheeses covered with rock salt hung from the ceiling, and there were wedges of fancy cheeses made with onions and bacon and sardines. Before long he had the wagon loaded and was off down the hill toward town, marveling at the clear sky and the thin crusts of frost on the rooftops and on the deep, still river that sailed along below on its way to the sea. At some point during his reveries, his wagon shook and suddenly grew heavier. When he looked over his shoulder, Jonathan discovered that Ahab had crawled up onto the rear of the cart and fallen asleep among the cheeses.

The Guildhall was bustling with activity. A score of the sort who take everything very seriously were shouting and pounding their fists into open palms and clearing their throats to make everyone note that something important was being said. Old Beezle of Beezle’s Dry Goods and General Merchandise was red-faced; his spectacles kept sliding away off the tip of his nose. He maintained, in a loud voice, that Willowood Station had been demolished by flood. He had, he said, scientific proof that the sorts of levees and piers built at Willowood could not have stood the onslaught of swollen rivers over the course of many seasons. If those present would just pay attention to the diagrams and charts he’d brought along, the whole matter would be clarified and the people of Twombly Town could set about fortifying their own banks against the same eventuality.

All in all, the villagers appeared to be uninterested in Mr Beezle, mainly because he brought the same charts and diagrams to town meetings every time the rainy season began. His wonderful drawings of what looked like medieval fortifications were written all over with large numbers and words like ‘stress load’ and ‘flow value’ and ‘whirl schute’ – words which sounded marvelous and important.

Old Wurzle, the researcher, was also carrying on. As Jonathan poked his head in through the door he could hear Professor Wurzle saying, ‘We’ve seen your piers and levees, Mr Beezle. We’ve seen your piers and levees until they’ve given us the pip!’ Even though the Professor’s comments were made in a loud voice, Mr Beezle didn’t seem to hear them. Professor Wurzle, as a consequence, repeated the part about having gotten the pip and added, as a capper, that he was a ‘man of science’ and that Mr Beezle was a greengrocer. But, as far as Twombly Town and perhaps the whole valley was concerned, Professor Wurzle
was
fairly scientific. He had a laboratory filled with apparatus and with devices continually bubbling and whistling.

But the Professor’s main accomplishment was that he was a historian. He knew the history of Twombly Town and of most of the families living there, and it was even rumored he had once climbed into the mountains in the east and lived with the Light Elves for a month or so. But that was thirty or forty years ago, and almost nobody remembered much about the incident anymore. What they did remember was that Wurzle, while researching the mysteries of Stooton Slough, a water lily-choked swamp far below Willowood Station, had come across the hulk of a very old and very beautiful sailing ship – rather like a sloop – mired in the rushes.

The figurehead and three masts with a few tattered bits of stiff and crusted canvas were visible above the stagnant water and pond lilies of the swamp. The figurehead itself was carved in the semblance of a frightful dragon with furled wings. In either eye was a great jewel, one a ruby and the other an emerald. The masts themselves were minutely carved with odd runes and hieroglyphs. Wurzle’s intention was to cut off all that was above water and haul it back upriver to Twombly Town.

He realized, of course, that such a feat would require a barge and tools and ropes and the help of several men, so he returned to Willowood and found three traders and a raft. The four men set out, although it was late in the season, and hadn’t floated halfway down to Stooton-on-River when a great storm overtook them and forced them ashore. For two days the men huddled in a cavern above the banks, the masts and sails of their own raft having been reduced to rubbish by the wind and rain. Finally two of the traders struck out overland for Willowood. When the storm cleared, Wurzle and the last trader, who had an enormous nose and the unlikely name of Flutesnoot, continued on Wurzle’s raft which had somehow survived the storm, to see what they could see.

To poor Wurzle’s dismay, the ruins of the mysterious sloop had gone to bits in the storm and there was nothing at all jutting up through the swamp lilies which floated purple and yellow on the surface of the water. The two men probed below the dark surface, but found nothing. Whereupon Mr Flutesnoot, having come so far on a wild goose chase, began to complain.

First he grumbled that a man had to be a lunatic to journey out after enchanted sailing ships. Then he moaned that he supposed the money Wurzle offered wasn’t half worth the trouble. He had, he said, eight little children, all wearing the same pair of shoes in shifts, and his wife had certain problems with her joints. Finally, he seemed to hint that it would be only fair that the Professor pay him the salary he’d promised the two deserters and, ‘Cut ’em out,’ as he put it.

Just about then, both men were wading in a shallows several hundred feet below the mouth of the slough when Wurzle saw the flash of green in among the rocks. He plunged in and, after dredging about for a moment, plucked up the emerald eye of the dragon. Two more days of searching and sifting through sand and pebbles, brought forth two strawberry-size rubies and a three-foot-long fragment of one of the carved masts lodged in a stand of rushes plus another curious elf device which was altogether unidentifiable. The Professor gave the two rubies to Mr Flutesnoot, who returned to Willowood and, on the strength of his adventure, was promptly elected mayor.

Professor Wurzle brought the faceted emerald eye back to Twombly Town where he graciously contributed it to the museum. The section of mast he studied for several years, deciphering runes, puzzling out hieroglyphs. He finally determined that the carvings told the story of an entire nation of piratical elves living on some far distant Oceanic Isle, thousands of leagues from the coast of the field dwarfs. Why their sloop had sailed upriver and why it had been left deserted and how long ago all of this had come to pass were mysteries.

The meeting took up the better part of the morning. Almost everyone there had something powerfully important to say, or at least thought he did. Beezle had his say; Professor Wurzle had his; then Gilroy Bastable made it clear half a dozen times that
he
couldn’t say one way or another but that everyone, as far as he could see, should do his duty. The high, open-timbered roof of the old Guildhall fairly shook with the tumult while Ahab slept outside, guarding the cheeses and dreaming about roaming through subterranean caverns in pursuit of gingerbread cookies.

Jonathan remained silent throughout even though broad hints were dropped here and there concerning the necessity of saving the holiday celebrations whether or not there were traders at Willowood Station. In fact, Jonathan had already made up his mind. The previous night while staring into the embers of his fire, he had chosen his course of action. Without question, adventure was on the horizon, gesturing to him like a forest nymph – his fate led downriver to the sea. He had heard stories of the fogbound coast and of the great fish and sea monsters that frolicked in seaweed gardens. Such tales held a certain appeal for him, although he, like most of the people of Twombly Town could be easily satisfied. Though they loved beyond anything to be told tales of travel to distant lands, they rarely, with the possible exception of Professor Wurzle, actually enjoyed the prospects of such travel.

Jonathan was filled with a sense of adventure though. By the time the meeting wound down he was just a bit puffed up with pride and when it was finally his turn to speak, he came near close to strutting up to the front of the hall. Amid a great deal of applause, he held one hand aloft and began a very pretty speech that, remarkable enough, said exactly what the people of Twombly Town wanted to hear – that theories about Willowood Station were all fine, but it was action, not theories, that was called for in this situation. Someone, he insisted, must sail south to complete the trading and return before Christmas or else the holidays would be a rather sorry lot. Without honeycakes the traditional Christmas feasts would suffer, and without elfin gifts, the children would be sad. If the feasting were poor and the children were sad, Jonathan said in a stout voice, then the Christmas holidays might as well be Willowood Station all smashed and gone down the river.

Jonathan’s speech was inspired. The people of Twombly Town were, up until then, uncertain as to whether Jonathan would undertake the voyage or not. What with Gilroy Bastable’s pessimistic account of his conversation with Jonathan the previous night, the outlook had been grim. Their response, therefore, was to shout hurrah and stomp about and lift Jonathan onto their shoulders and carry him up and down Main Street. Ahab looked on the scene in wonder. Even Wurzle and Beezle seemed content in their way. Beezle was happy that he’d had an opportunity to lay out his diagrams and explain them, and Professor Wurzle was happy for other reasons.

Jonathan spent the rest of the day at market, trading cheeses for cabbages and hams and mushrooms and nets of onions and garlic. His wagon, when he finally towed it home, was as full as when he’d set out. For the return trip Ahab wasn’t allowed to ride on top of the load for fear that he’d squish the produce. Besides, the way home was uphill and Jonathan had a hard enough time of it without having to contend with the dog’s additional weight. The wheels of the wagon got mired in the mud twice so that by the time he lurched up before his porch, Jonathan was as splashed and muddied as Gilroy Bastable had been after his tussle with the storm. But all in all it had been a very good day. His decision to make the journey seemed almost as wise as it had when he made his speech at the Guildhall.

Supper that night wasn’t as good as it should have been, as Jonathan was preoccupied and his mind wasn’t on what he was doing. His cornmeal muffins burned and tasted like sour charcoal, and the lima beans in his ham-and-bean soup refused to cook, and cracked rather than mushed when he bit into them. About halfway through the evening, Ahab began to walk in his sleep and strode stiff-legged around the room three times, one eye open and one shut, moaning fearfully. Coming on top of the ruined muffins and hardened beans, Ahab’s behavior was a bad omen indeed.

Jonathan didn’t pretend not to know what was the matter. It was, of course, the journey he’d proposed in such a strutting manner at the Guildhall. As the night became blacker and the wind picked up and whistled through the redwoods in the forest beyond his house, Jonathan developed an even greater liking for his home and fire than usual. The spirit of adventure in him was being wrestled down by the spirit of stay-at-home, and by eight o’clock in the evening he was pacing up and down the room, first planning the trip, then unplanning it. He could already feel the cold night wind off the river and the wet socks that were the curse of raftsmen everywhere. He could imagine his disappointment when his eggs gave out and the fresh meat wasn’t fresh any longer. Unless he stopped to hunt – a sport he wasn’t inclined to – he would exist for the better part of the voyage on oatmeal porridge, jerked beef and hard biscuits. With luck, he would be able to pick wild blackberries on into the first of December, especially in the rainy hemlock forests closer to the sea. But as good as wild blackberries are, it doesn’t take too many days before they aren’t so good anymore. Jonathan’s thoughts were bleak indeed, and the more he paced and thought, the less he wanted to go.