Marianne, the Matchbox, and the Malachite Mouse (8 page)

A barely intelligible quacking and gargling ensued. Translated into the closest approximation of recognizable words, the sense of it seemed to be that nothing needed to be done for a few weeks. Obsequies were underway. There would be a state funeral. Only then would the heiress need her properly prepared opponent.

Buttercup went to her room, stripped, and examined herself with care. Her spurs were longer than some she had seen through the knothole. Her fang was well developed, thanks no doubt to those years of careful rubbing with tallow. While she was unpracticed in actual combat, she was young and better fed than most of the wild Grisls she had seen.

‘Risk not, gain not,’ the internal voice advised. ‘I hate to be involved, kid, but I think you’d better get some practice.’ Buttercup could not but agree. It would certainly not do to meet the Heiress Presumptive without any practical experience at all.

Since she could not very well simply go out into the countryside looking for experience, she felt it would be well to take advantage of the opportunity brought to her gate, as it were. On the next holiday, when the wild Grisls assembled in the meadow, Buttercup emerged from the house to take part in the combat. She was, quite frankly, frightened half to death. The inner voice which had plagued her for years was mercifully silent, as though holding its tongue, but she was afraid she might not be able to concentrate.

The preliminaries to challenge took care of that. As she told herself later, one needed only to get to a certain point by determination. After that, the hormones took over.

When the bout had concluded, Buttercup selected one of the young males who had been aroused to erotic suppliance by the battle and took him back to the house with her. Not to have done so would have caused antagonism and violence, even though she had previously decided that she could not,
must
not risk actual dalliance. The conclusion was inescapable that untrammeled eroticism led inevitably to egg-maturation. A Grisl’s chances of winning a challenge would undoubtedly be lessened if one was swollen and lethargic with egg. Therefore, once the young male had been given the love bite, she ensconced him in a chair next to the gardener’s boy. That much was easy. The harder part was to leave him there. He was remarkably attractive.

On successive holidays she engaged in battle, emerging victorious each time. The number of young males in the sun porch swelled to seven, and Buttercup had to fetch more chairs. She felt actual pity as she realized that unless someone carrying the antidote arrived at the house – one of the other Mr Thrumms, perhaps – or unless the house fell down around them, they would sit there for years while the seasons passed and Thrumm House was given over to mice and lizards.

Came a morning when the communication device quacked and gargled once more. The Van Hoost rogue was to be brought to the Palace in ten days time. Mimicking Fribberle’s voice, Buttercup assented.

Fribberle would undoubtedly have procured a conveyance. Buttercup did not wish to have a conveyance. She wished to explore the world and see something of its ways. She spent the last evening in Thrumm House in nostalgic reminiscences of her peaceful and unsuspecting childhood and in searching the only drawers she had been unable to search before, those in Mr Thrumm’s own room. Aside from stacks of pictures which intrigued her inasmuch as she had not known that males did that with one another, she found nothing of interest.

On the following morning, just before she left, she paused before the portraits of the recent Queens – Hermiones I, II and III; Euthasias I through IV; Grislda, surnamed ‘the only.’ None of them had the Van Hoost chin, but she resolved that the next Queen would have that attribute, Heiress Presumptive or no Heiress Presumptive. When the time came, she would rule under her own name, or under some new name, something original, perhaps something she would pick for herself. Grisls were not given formal names, as a general rule, until they had challenged and won at least once. What would be the point, after all? ‘Short, anonymous lives,’ the poet had said of early losers. ‘Short, anonymous lives.’ Nurseys, being uniformly sentimental, often attached some baby name to their Grisl charges just as they did their male ones. The males kept their baby names, but Grisls did not.

Therefore it must be as Buttercup that she emerged into the world. It was, she thought, quite fitting. As Buttercup she had come. As Buttercup she would go.

‘Quite right, too,’ said Mouse. Buttercup, of course, did not know it was Mouse. She accepted the reinforcement as though it had come from some alter ego of her own.

In order to avoid challenges, which would have slowed the trip to an interminable crawl, Buttercup wore the so-called ‘quiet garb,’ a light though opaque garment, a head to spur dust-gown with a flap to cover the lower face and fang. She had not gone over five miles before she realized that if it had not been for the garment, she would not have been able to keep her resolution about the males. Every group that passed seemed to have half a dozen of them, burgeoning with health and juices, tippy-toeing along with their cute little behinds twitching, not at all like the placid villagers she had been used to seeing. Not for the first, or last, time, she regretted the seven sitting there on the sun porch, nipped into impotent insensibility.

Except for this, there seemed to be no impediment to a swift and pleasant journey. Buttercup found the weather delightful, warm and yet airy, with light breezes from the fragrant forests, cooled from the heat of the day with gentle showers, dry by evening so that one could sleep in comfort. She was glad not to be confined in a conveyance. Those that passed on the road looked hot and uncomfortable, like ovens on wheels. This was not quite her own thought, but it was not so unfamiliar as to seem disturbing. As she walked, she rehearsed what she would do and say at the Palace, how she would get by the guard Nurseys to emerge into the arena at the proper time. She spent some time considering whether the Heiress Presumptive would have been well trained in combat, deciding probably not. All this conjecture was so compelling that she failed to keep her attention on the road. As the sun dropped behind the trees she looked up in sudden confusion, realizing that for some time she had not seen another person and that the trail she was on had, at some point behind her, departed from the route she should have been following.

‘Oh, fine,’ snarled Mouse. Buttercup ignored this interpolation since it was very close to her own feelings.

There was nothing around her but forest and the path which meandered through it, seemingly without destination, certainly without observable direction.

She was not frightened. That is, at that time, she did not identify her feelings as fright. She was distinctly uncomfortable, disliking the idea of being quite so surrounded by woods with the night coming on and annoyed with herself for having allowed the predicament to occur. It was while she was working through this feeling of annoyance that she heard the sound. Someone or something was blundering about in the underbrush at no great distance from the path and making a noise which was, perhaps, a whuffling. Or a hruff. Perhaps both, she thought, in sequence. An ungrislish sound.

At a greater distance a person was shouting, words which made no sense at all to her though she was pleased that someone else was abroad in the falling dark. ‘Hiya, wurfle, wurfle, heah, heah,’ the voice called unintelligibly. ‘Heah, heah.’

The underbrush quaked, shivered, rattled with leaves and twigs as a monstrous form erupted onto the path to turn toward Buttercup with an expression of brutish ferocity. Without knowing how she got there, Buttercup found herself with her back against a tree and her robe hiked high so that her spurs could be brought into play. The creature crouched, ready to spring, then began a series of stiff-legged hops in her direction, all the while making wuffling and hruffing noises. An inner voice was saying, ‘Just a minute, here. I seem to remember that animal,’ to which Buttercup was paying no attention whatsoever.

Just as she was about to leap, fang fully extended, a person moved out of the trees behind the creature and called plaintively, ‘Damn it, Whurfle, down I say, let the Grisl alone.’ The person, a young male of a slight build and pallid aspect, came toward her, saying in an apologetic tone, ‘Damn dog! Please accept my apologies, Grisl. This animal of mine keeps running off and making a nuisance of itself. It really only wants to be friends, and I’m sorry if it frightened you.’

Buttercup adjusted her clothing in a mood of frosty hauteur, remarking that she had not been in the least frightened. The ‘dog,’ meantime, continued its stiff-legged gambol, obviously overjoyed to be the center of attention. Buttercup thought briefly of nipping him, only slightly, to teach him a lesson, but decided that this would undoubtedly offend the young male who was, after all, the only person she had seen for hours and likely her only guide back to the road. Besides, now that she was calmer, she recalled reading of dogs, a rare animal imported from the planet of the barbarian Earthians with whom the creature was said to have a symbiotic or perhaps parasitic relationship. She had not seen a dog before, however, and could not, quite frankly, find any charm in the one before her.

The young male, who introduced himself as Honsl, a printer from the nearby village of Rivvelford, continued his apologetic expostulations, ending with, ‘And now I seem to be lost. Can you direct me?’

Sternly quelling a response to this question which would have directed him to depart in an unmentionable direction, Buttercup replied that she, too, was lost, having misplaced the road in her abstraction. He, in a manner which Buttercup considered to be very considerate, offered to accompany her back down the path in the hope they would come upon some more commodious and better traveled way. She found him a pleasant-looking young person, interesting in that he seemed unconscious of her as a Grisl. He quietly accepted her as a thinking being, or so it seemed, without any of that coy shyness which so many males used on all occasions of converse with Grisls of any age or condition. He was relaxing, somewhat as she had often found Sneeth to be.

They returned along the path, stopping in bewilderment at a fork in the way. Buttercup had not noticed it on the way, and she had no idea which of the two paths before them had been her original one. They chose the left-hand path, which seemed a bit less overgrown, only to confront still another fork before they had wound their way another five hundred paces. Again choosing the left-hand way – for Buttercup seemed to remember that the forest had been on her left as she came up the river and therefore the road should lie to the left if she was faced in the opposite direction – they went on until darkness made it impossible to go farther. It was obvious to both of them that they would have to wait until morning when the sun would give them direction.

Honsl settled himself against a tree with his animal and spoke in a desultory way about the weather, happenings at the Palace, the funeral observances conducted in the village for the Old Queen, and other such trivial conversation. He spoke of the state of agriculture in the province (it had been a wet spring) and of how he had acquired the dog. It had been part of the stock in trade of an importer who had gone bankrupt, owing Honsl a large printing bill. Honsl had taken the dog, so he said, ‘for company,’ in settlement of the debt. He had no knowledge of where the creature originated or what system it may have been native to, and Buttercup told him what she had read of dogs, also mentioning that she found the example before her in every way inferior to the native fauna. It had no grace. It made no attractive noises. It smelled.

Honsl admitted that it did smell but said that one grew attached to the noises the thing made and to its affectionate nature. Buttercup reflected that males were notoriously whimsical in their desires; that many of them made collections of useless and trivial things – witness Mr Thrumm! – and that it was no part of her duty to educate this village printer in matters esthetic. She congratulated him on his acquisition and settled herself to rest.

It was at this moment that the dog, who had been quiet for some time, hruffed. He was standing, muzzle pointed at a spark of light which flickered among the windblown branches. Honsl saw it as well, and Buttercup suggested that they walk toward it, slowly, in order not to fall into any holes or ditches. As they grew closer, the light was seen to come from a cottage window. The dog went ahead, uttering a brusque ‘harf, harf, harf sound. Considering the unpleasantness of the sound, Buttercup was not surprised when the occupant of the cottage, an aged and unattractive Grisl of forbidding aspect, came out to see who was approaching, light streaming from the doorway behind her to fill the dooryard with shadows.

The dwelling was small, done up in a style popular during the reign of Hermione, called variously ‘Marple Cookie’ or ‘Marple Bread,’ after the spicy and highly ornamented cakes which it much resembled. Buttercup was hungry enough that the idea made her mouth water. The Grisl beckoned them forward, identifying herself as Mother Marple, at which Buttercup could not suppress a giggle. It was exactly like something out of a children’s story. What followed was precisely as might have been foretold. Mother Marple offered them marple bread. At that, Buttercup did laugh, though the old Grisl patted her head very kindly, searching her face, or that of it which could be seen, with serious concentration. Buttercup chose not to take offense. There would be time for that in daylight.

The old Grisl pointed the direction and told them they could find the road easily in the morning, then offered them two pallets before the fire on which to sleep. The dog had, for some reason known best to dogs, either decided not to come in or had not been invited, which was more likely. Feeling particularly drowsy, Buttercup did not worry over the animal. Seemingly, neither did Honsl, for in a moment, lulled by the heat of the fire and the warmth in their bellies of the freshly baked marple cake, they were both asleep.