The Elfin Ship (35 page)

‘Just about everything there is,’ Escargot said mysteriously. ‘You don’t think they had time before they had a watch to tell it, do you? Well, that was the watch. There’s one man who should run it, and a Dwarf who shouldn’t but does. It’s lucky for us he ain’t had it long enough to have worked the whole thing through. Because Miles told me that time ain’t what you’d think. It’s everything there is, and it’s nothing. If you understand the watch, you can run it ahead and you can run it back and you can stop it from running at all. When I first used it, it didn’t seem to have no effect farther than about ten feet. When I sold it, I could slow the whole show down and stop it for twenty-five feet around.

‘But Selznak – there’s no telling what tricks he’s been up to with the thing. Stooton had a look of decay, like it’s been a ghost town for twenty years. I don’t like the look of it. And you tell me Willowood’s the same way. People gone, houses smashed up. Some of it’s goblins, but most of it’s Selznak. Him and that damn watch. I’ll go after it, like I said, but I won’t go alone.’

‘For what incredible reason,’ asked the Professor, ‘did you sell the watch to that demon? I hope you got more for it than that ridiculous pig we keep hearing about.’

‘Oh I got more,’ said Escargot cryptically, ‘but I still didn’t get half enough. Now I’m a little dry, and if you mates have no complaints, I believe I’ll just uncork another bottle of that ale we stowed.’

‘Make it two,’ said Jonathan.

‘Three,’ said the Professor.

Suddenly the plate of fishbones began to look horrible to Jonathan, so he picked it up, stepped out through the cabin door, and dumped the whole thing into the river. There was almost no wind at all, and the night was silent as a tomb. Even the Goblin Wood, a dark line of distant trees, seemed still. No fires burned and no drums pounded. It was likely too cold even for goblins to be out. The river ran deep and dark beneath the raft, and it struck him that the water which flowed beneath him at that moment had flowed past Twombly Town only a couple of days ago. Some of it likely curled about Mayor Bastable’s fishing line and pushed the millwheel around a few times. Some days hence it would flow past Seaside and run smack up against old ocean. Then who could say what strange things that water would see. What Jonathan would see, likely, was the inside of the castle on Hightower Ridge.

Back in the cabin, the Professor and Escargot were taking a pull of ale. Neither was speaking; both were deep in thought. Dooly had abandoned the conversation and was sitting on his bunk writing away at his book which had evolved to the point where it had a central character – the Toad King.

When Jonathan sat down, Escargot wiped his mouth with his shirtsleeve. ‘So that’s that, mates. You know me now. I been a lot of things, but I never been what I ain’t, and you can lay to that. I got a cloak here that amounts to a heap more to the likes o’ me than any infernal pocketwatch. And I got me a submarine back at the Haven that can get me and the lad out to the Isles in a week. There’s lands beyond that, too, and someday, mark me, I’m a-going there. It might as well be now.’

‘How long will it take us to get the watch?’ Jonathan asked.

‘The way I see it,’ said Escargot, ‘either we get it or we don’t. If we mess up, then getting up to Twombly Town by Christmas is the least of our worries. We won’t get no second chance – not this time. If we get it, we’ll be on our way upriver three days from now.’

‘Three days from now we’re on the river, watch or no watch,’ said Jonathan.

‘Done!’ said Escargot, and he thrust out his hand. Dooly hurried over from his bunk and shook hands with the rest of them. He said it was a good idea to spit on your hand first and then shake before going into adventures such as this, but the Professor suggested they forego the routine this time – a handshake alone, under the circumstances, was enough. More, in fact, than he would have expected.

They were away before dawn. It seemed frightfully cold, but there was no ice on the deck and only a very little bit of frost, so it clearly wasn’t as cold as it had been. Jonathan never got on well in the cold and would much prefer stealing watches comfortably in pleasant weather, so he was happy to think that things were warming up some. He hoped it was a trend. The breeze was good, blowing almost straightaway upriver, and they found themselves clipping along past the banks along the Goblin Wood at a quick pace.

The limbs of the great alders that lined the riverbank drooped low out over the water, shadowing the mossy bank and giving the forest a sort of impenetrable look, as if all were darkness within and the forest floor never saw the sun. Long green vines twined along through the trees, and from the tips of the limbs bunches of gray-green moss drooped, dripping moisture from the morning dew. They rounded a bend in the river and surprised a troll attempting unsuccessfully to club a fish. The thing saw the raft while peering between its legs. It was bent at the waist and its nose was an inch or two from the swirling waters of the Oriel. Somehow the upside down view threw the troll into something of a panic, for it stumbled forward waving its arms in circles as if trying to keep its balance, and it tumbled head first into the river. It leaped up immediately in a towering rage. Dooly shouted at it and put his thumbs in either ear and waggled his fingers just to show it that he was one of the boys and had dealt with a few trolls in his day. But the troll immediately broke a limb off a nearby alder and flung it out over the river, managing to smash the thing into the side of the cabin. Dooly threw it back, but it only flew about twenty yards before landing in the river. By then the troll had forgotten all about them and was slamming away at fish again.

Beyond that the banks of the Oriel were empty. No herons waded in the shallows, no beavers or muskrats were busy building nests. Everything was still. ‘Creepy place,’ Jonathan remarked to the Professor.

‘The less movement here, the better,’ replied Wurzle. ‘If it’s activity you want, come at night.’

‘No thanks,’ said Jonathan. ‘This is fine. Just so no one suggests we tie up to the bank and go exploring. Those woods look old enough to be petrified.’

‘It’s a mushroom collector’s paradise,’ said the Professor. ‘I’m going in there some day.’

‘I’ll go too,’ said Jonathan. ‘Let’s plan on it some afternoon about thirty years from now.’

Escargot stayed inside all afternoon. He popped out once in his cloak of invisibility, but was careful not to carry anything around. He explained to the others that he was the ‘trump card’, the ‘ace in the hole’, and that they were too close to Hightower to take any chances. There were likely more than just a few odd silly goblins lurking about, and there was no use stirring things up.

They threw out their anchors below Hightower shortly after dark. Jonathan lit lanterns fore and aft, and the Professor, in order for them to appear very matter-of-fact, sang a couple of old songs in a cheerful sort of falsetto voice. They went to some length to make it appear as if they were simply spending an evening on the river and that nothing at all was going on. Each of them kept a sharp eye out for goblins.

In the distance, rising up out of the dark woods and the swampy lowlands above town, was the craggy peak of Hightower Ridge. Atop the ridge, dim and obscure in the dark of evening sat the castle, known up and down the river simply as Hightower. Pale smoke rose above the stone spires of the tower, and several lights burned here and there within – one in the uppermost reaches of the largest tower that angled up above the rest in gray immensity, almost indistinguishable from the rocky cliffside behind it. The yellow circles of light reminded Jonathan overmuch of eyes, and as he watched the walls of the castle fade into the obscurity of night, the topmost light blinked off, then, a moment later, blinked on again. It looked for all the world as if the thing had winked at him. Although he knew that such a thing was nonsense, he didn’t like the idea anyway and so decided not to take such an interest in the castle. There were other things to occupy his thoughts.

About eleven o’clock he turned the lanterns down and, along with his companions, went into the cabin and set about turning in. They even went so far as to climb into their bunks and lay there in the darkness, none of them able to sleep even if they would have liked to. The hours passed: midnight, one o’clock, two. Finally at about two-thirty Jonathan and Dooly slipped out of the cabin and slid into the seats in front of the paddlewheel. Dooly kept signaling to Jonathan by putting his index finger over his mouth, alerting him, Jonathan supposed, that they were being very quiet indeed. Escargot padded invisibly across the deck and silently hoisted both anchors, then took a seat forward. The Professor took hold of the tiller arm and the raft began making slow progress up the river. Only Ahab stayed inside the cabin asleep, having no stomach for fooling about in the middle of the night.

They crept along for two hundred yards, silent but for the muffled splash of the wheel as it turned. Then they came about in a long arc, and the Professor headed the raft up the mouth of Hinkle Creek. Once shrouded by the trees and brush along the creek bank, Escargot grabbed a pole and pushed the raft away from the shallow water along either bank of the narrow channel. They were well up into the creek – thirty or forty yards – before it became too rocky and overgrown to proceed. Escargot and the Professor tied up, and as Dooly had luckily done that night in Stooton, they dropped both anchors overboard into the shallow water. Then there was nothing left to do but wait until morning.

‘Have we fooled anyone?’ Jonathan whispered when the four of them were back inside the cabin.

‘We haven’t fooled
him,
if that’s what you mean,’ said Escargot. ‘Or at least if we have, we won’t have for long. There’s nothing that goes on along this stretch o’ the river that he don’t know. Nothing but about me, that is. We’ve got to hope he don’t know about me. He likely won’t care much about you, if you follow me.’

The Professor grunted an ambiguous reply, but Jonathan was pretty sure that what Escargot said was true. Tomorrow would tell. He decided not to think about it, and did instead what he always did when he wanted to sleep but was too restless or excited – he began counting the holes in a huge, imaginary Swiss cheese. He made it to the eighty-second hole before growing drowsy. Then he counted the eighty-third hole four times, then couldn’t seem to remember what came after eighty-three, then forgot all about holes and about Swiss cheese and was lost in sleep. When he woke, the sun was high.

Dooly was still asleep, but Escargot and the Professor were up and about. The cabin door was open, and Jonathan could hear low voices out on deck. He splashed some water on his face, brushed his teeth, and hurried outside without bothering to shave. He figured that either he’d catch up on his shaving in a day or two or would end up locked away in some dungeon where shaving wasn’t required.

The day was overcast and dim, but it wasn’t particularly cold. The forest on either side of the river was overgrown with ferns and vines and little, sprouting trees. The Professor was ashore, hacking at brush with a hand axe, and tossing particularly leafy clumps and branches back up on to the deck. Escargot’s voice, coming, it seemed, from up on the mast, said in a sort of stage whisper, ‘Hand me up one of them branches, mate.’

Jonathan shoved a branch up toward the top of the mast, and it was pulled out of his hand. He watched as the brush appeared to twine itself through the line wrapped around the crossbar. He shoved another in the same general direction, then another and another, until the mast appeared to be more a tree than a mast. Then they went to work on the foredeck, heaping brush about the deck and piling it atop the cabin. It didn’t take too long, finally, to finish the job.

They looked it over from this angle and that, rearranging brush here, adding a bit there, and decided that from the starboard side – that is from the Hightower side – the raft was tolerably well camouflaged while from the downstream side it looked like a pile of ruined shrubbery heaped about the deck of an ill-hidden raft. But it was the best they could do. Escargot pointed out that there likely weren’t enough townspeople left around to worry about, and that goblins, dim-witted as they are, could be taken in by anything. The Dwarf, of course, likely had better things to do than be off hiking through the underbrush along Hinkle Creek. So the raft was probably as safe and as hidden away as it was ever going to be.

They debated for a bit about whether to hang about the raft all day and wait until sunset to investigate the village, or to set out right off and do a bit of snooping. It seemed safer to wait, but on the other hand it would be far trickier poking around unfamiliar countryside at night. What it boiled down to in the end was that none of them wanted to sit and wait. There was too much anticipation, and that often led to worry and fear, neither of which would be helpful.

So they set out, about eleven or so in the morning, carrying a bit of lunch in a knapsack. Jonathan and the Professor elected to carry truncheons, and Dooly carried what he called his ‘whack-um’ – a paddlelike slab of oak, more of a broken off boat oar than a club. Escargot carried nothing, neither a weapon nor a knapsack, since floating objects would no doubt draw undue attention. He insisted though that Dooly take along a coil of line – apparently an important item in a thief’s line of work.

They set out sloshing along the bank, finding muddy footholds in the shore grasses and clinging to roots and brush. On occasion they hopped along atop rocks for a bit, but the rocks were so slippery that soon there was more than one wet boot among them. Ahab, somehow, pranced along as if he were on the boardwalk at Twombly Town. No clumps of weeds or slippery stone seemed too small for him to balance on. About halfway back down the creek toward the river, Ahab began sniffing along, then thrust his nose into the bushes and disappeared. Jonathan, not wanting to lose sight of the dog, jammed through behind, calling him softly.