Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Elven Princess (3 page)

“You are almost an orphan?”

“Indeed.”

“How can you be almost an orphan?”

“Why couldn’t I be?” I demanded. “If anyone
can be, I could be.”

“What I mean is…” He took a deep breath.
“How can one be almost an orphan?”

“Oh. Well, it’s only that my parents aren’t
dead.”

“I see,” said he.

“But they were kidnapped,” I confided.

“Are you sure they didn’t just run away?” he
asked.

“It was a stormy night and I had been away
from my parents’ home, which is to say my former home, which is to
say Cor Cottage just outside Dewberry Hills, and I was returning
for a visit. As I approached I heard a disturbance, though at first
I attributed it to the sounds of the storm. Then I looked up at the
cottage window to see figures silhouetted on the shade, locked in a
grim struggle.”

“What did you do?”

“Why, I rushed forward to aid my poor old
mother, who as I recall smells of warm pie, and my poor old father,
and my sister Celia, and my aunt Oregana, and my cousin Gervil, and
my other cousin Tuki, who is a girl cousin, which is to say a
cousin who is a girl, which makes sense, because whoever heard of a
boy named Tuki.”

“They were all struggling by the
window?”

“They may all have been struggling by the
window, or some of them may have been, or perhaps only one of them
was struggling by the window. I don’t know, because when I burst
into the front door, they were all gone. The back door was open
wide and the rain was splashing in.”

“What happened to them?”

“I know not.”

“Were there any clues?”

“Indeed there were.”

“What were they?”

“The table had been set for nine, which was
two places too many.”

“Three places!” said the orphan
triumphantly. “You thought I wasn’t paying attention. There was
your father, mother, sister, aunt, and two cousins. That makes
six.”

“They would also have set a place for
Geneva.”

“Of course they would have. Who is she?”

“She’s my other cousin, which is to say
Gervil’s sister, only she’s imaginary, but she wasn’t always
imaginary, which is to say she died, but Gervil still sees her, so
Aunt Oregana always sets a place for her.”

“What other clues?”

I listed them off. “There was a knife stuck
in Gervil’s bed. Floorboards had been loosened in several rooms.
There were drops of purple liquid leading out the back door. And
someone had hung bunches of onions from the rafters of the dining
room. Most mysterious of all was the fact that the tracks led away
from the house only fifty feet and then disappeared entirely.”

The orphan gripped me around the waist and
squeezed. “How terrible,” he said, in a tiny voice.

Hysteria clomped along slowly down the snow
covered road for some time. The orphan was so quiet that for a
while I thought he must have fallen asleep. But at last he stirred
and shifted a bit in his seat, which is to say upon Hysteria’s
flank. I myself had been quiet as I remembered the events of that
horrible night.

“What are you thinking about?” asked the
orphan.

“I’m thinking about that horrible night,” I
replied.

“Did you never find your family?”

“No, though I searched for weeks. My mother
was to make me a blueberry pie that night, and I not only have
never seen my mother since, I did not get to eat that pie
either.”

“I’m sorry I brought up such a painful
memory,” he said, then paused. “Do you suppose that the purple
drops on the floor could have been from your blueberry pie?”

“Fiends!” said I. “To rob a man of his
mother and his pie in the same night!”

“Perhaps it were best that we think on
something else,” said he.

“Perhaps,” I agreed.

“If you are really such a great
story-teller…”

“The greatest in the world.”

“And if the story of the Queen of
Aerithraine is a great story…”

“Wonderful. Exciting. True. Profound.”

“Well, maybe you could tell me the
story.”

“I get half a crown for that story in
Illustria,” said I.

“I have a shiny penny,” said he.

“The story begins in Aerithraine, far to the
west, along the coast of the great ocean sea. From storied
Illustria, its capital, to Cor Cottage just outside Dewberry Hills
in River County, Aerithraine has been a great and powerful country
for some seven hundred years more or less. By more or less, I mean
that it has been more or less seven hundred years that Aerithraine
has been a country and that it has been more or less great and more
or less powerful during those seven hundred years. But about fifty
years ago, it was less. That was when the old king died, and as is
the way of kings, a new one was crowned. He was King Julian the
Rectifier.

“He was called Julian the Rectifier because
he was chiefly interested in rectifying. He spent most of his time
rectifying. He rectified all over the place. And he was good at it.
He rectified like nobody else.”

“It means setting things to right,” said the
orphan.

“Of course it does and that is just what he
did. Under his reign, the kingdom was prosperous and wealthy. And,
as he wasn’t so interested in warring as in rectifying, there was
peace throughout the land. King Julian had only one son, and he
passed to that son the strongest and wealthiest kingdom in all of
Duaron, and if it had only remained so, Elleena would have become
nothing more than a minor princess perhaps.”

“Which would not have made a half-crown
story,” pointed out the orphan.

“That is so.”

“Carry on then.”

“King Justin was the son of Julian. I hear
tell that he was once called Justin the Good and Justin the Wise,
though now when story-tellers refer to him, they usually call him
Justin the Weak or Justin the Unready.”

“What do you call him?”

“I just call him King Justin,” said I.
“Though I truly believe he may deserve the title Justin the Brave,
it is not what the listeners want to hear.”

“Go on.”

“King Justin married a princess from the
faraway land of Goth. The Arch-Dukes of Goth, which is to say the
rulers of that land, have for generations, maintained power through
a tightly woven web of treaties with its mighty neighbors. Their
chief barter in this endeavor is the marriage of the many female
members of the family. I hear the current Arch-Duke has but four
daughters at least as of yet, but his father who was Arch-Duke
before him had seventeen, and his father, which is to say the
grandfather of the current Arch-Duke had nineteen.”

“That hurts just thinking about it.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Go on.”

“It must have been quite a coup of diplomacy
for the Arch-Duke of Goth to make a match with the King of
Aerithraine, but he did, marrying to the King his daughter Beatrix.
And though I hear that the women of that country wear too much
make-up, she was never the less accounted a great beauty. She had
pale white skin, raven hair, smoldering eyes, and a gold ring in
her nose, as is the fashion in the east.

“King Justin and Queen Beatrix had four
strong sons, the eldest of whom was Prince Jared. He was
particularly beloved of the people. I saw him once when I was a
child of four or five, sitting on my poor old father’s shoulders as
the Dragon Knights passed on their tall white steeds. That is to
say, I was seated on my father’s shoulders and the Prince was not.
Neither were the Dragon Knights or their steeds. I don’t remember
why the Prince and the knights were in River County. It was too
long ago. He would have grown to be King upon his father’s death if
it was not for…”

“Goblins!”

“Yes, that’s right. You didn’t say you had
heard the story before, though I’ll warrant it wasn’t told as
well…”

“No!” screamed the orphan. “Goblins! Right
there!”

He pointed straight ahead, and sure enough,
stepping out of the shadows and into the moonlight were a half
dozen creepy little man-things. They were no more than three feet
tall, their over-sized round heads, glowing eyes, and gaping maws
giving away their identity. As they came closer those mouths
widened into grins filled with jagged little teeth, looking far too
much like the teeth on the blade of a cross-cut saw for my taste.
They brandished what weapons they had, mostly things they had
picked up from the ground—a stick, a length of cord with a knot in
it. But a couple of them carried old, discarded straight
razors.

Goblins are nasty little blighters. They
remind me of my cousin Gervil’s friend called Rupert. His name was
Sally, which explains why he was called Rupert. But like goblins,
he was short and had a big, round head. I don’t know why goblins
have such large heads for their little bodies. Of course I don’t
know why Rupert did either. There doesn’t seem to be much advantage
in it. On the other hand, goblins have excellent night vision,
making it very easy to sneak up on people in the dark. And they
have abnormally large mouths with an abnormally large number of
teeth in them. This was very unlike Rupert, which is to say Sally,
who as I recall had only five or six teeth, though he made up for
that by having an extra toe. In addition to which I don’t believe
his night vision was all that it might have been, for once he
kicked me in the head when he was on his way to the outhouse. Of
course that could have been on purpose. Rupert was a bit of a nasty
blighter too.

“What are you doing?” asked the orphan, as
Hysteria took a step back.

“Thinking about a fellow called Rupert,”
said I.

“Well stop it, and get us away.”

I said that Hysteria took a step back, but I
should have said that she took two steps back, one on each side. I
could tell she didn’t want the foul little creatures around her
feet. She’s very particular about her feet, as most horses are wont
to be. As they approached still nearer, she reared up a bit—not
enough to bother me, but just enough for the orphan to slip off her
haunches and land with a “poof” on his seat in the snow. The
goblins cackled grotesquely and I’m sure that they thought they had
secured for themselves a snack. They stopped laughing though when I
kicked my leg over Hysteria’s shoulder and dropped lightly to the
ground.

With a quick motion, I pulled my knife,
still stained red from crabapple pie, from my boot. It was a small
enough weapon to face off six attackers and I would have much
rather had a sword, but I had been forced to sell my sword in order
to get a fellow out of prison. I didn’t really know him, but he was
the beloved of a poor but beautiful farm girl. In retrospect it
would have been better if he had not turned out to be a werewolf,
but that is another story. If I ever write this down, maybe I’ll
say that I sold it to get the poor but beautiful farm girl out of
prison and that I slew the werewolf. Yes, that’s a much better
story.

“What are you doing?” asked the orphan.

“Recalling the time I slew a werewolf,” said
I.

“Finally something useful!” he
exclaimed.

The two foremost goblins looked at one
another. While six or seven goblins might sneak up on a man when he
was asleep, or might chase down a maiden who was alone and
defenseless, they would have to be extraordinary members of their
species to take on a seasoned warrior with a weapon.

“That’s right potato head!” shouted the
orphan, jumping to his feet. “Werewolves, vampires, giants; he’s
killed them all.

“Gree yard?” said the first goblin.

“Grock tor,” said the second goblin.

“I don’t think they understand us,” said
I.

The first began to skirt around me to the
right and the second began to skirt around me to the left. The
others were following along. I don’t know whether their intention
was to surround me so that they could attack from all sides at
once, or to get by me and at the boy, but I wasn’t going to let
either of those things happen. I took a quick step to the right and
kicked the big round head of the first goblin, which flew almost as
far as the kickball I kicked as a child, and of course the rest of
the goblin went right along with his head.

As a child, kickball was one of my favorite
pastimes. We had our own little team and I was almost always the
bowler. Sally and Gervil and several other boys made up the
outfield. Tuki played first, second, and third base.

“Look out for the other one!” the orphan
cried, interrupting my fond memories.

I twisted around to my left and kicked the
head of the second goblin, sending it in a lovely arc off into the
forest. If my first kick had scored a double, which is to say a
trip to second base, then this kick must surely have been a triple.
And I would dare Tuki to say that either of those goblin’s heads
went out of bounds.

“Look out!” the orphan shouted again.

I turned to give him a dirty look and saw a
third goblin who was attempting to use the distraction of his
fellows, which is to say their current use as substitute kick
balls, to slice my Achilles tendon with a rusty old razor. With a
quick jab, I thrust the point of my knife into his head and he
dropped to the ground—dead. When I looked back around, the other
goblins had wisely run away.

I put away my knife and then climbed back
into the saddle. The orphan had regained his feet and I reached
down, took his hand, and lifted him back into his spot behind me.
He reached around my waist and held on tight.

“Thank you,” he said.

“All is well,” said I. “A few goblins are no
match for a trained warrior.”