Sagaria (49 page)

“Tripe,” added the bed. “Chairs don’t see nothing, they don’t. Not like us beds. Did you know that people spend nearly half their life in bed? Stop whimpering, chair. It’s true, I tell you. I’m fed up with all your tommyrot. You may have had people sitting on you from time to time, but me … almost half of the whole time that I existed until I was pitched here, I had people lying on me. I saw the entire tableau of human life, I did. Birth, death, sleep, nightmare, love, sickness, health, poverty, wealth – the whole lot. Think about it. You ain’t
lived
until you been wetted. But a funny thing for you to ponder on: every single last one of these people, from the richest to the poorest, was the same in sleep.”

“They all had the same bottoms as well,” muttered the chair resentfully, but the bed raised its voice to drown out the interruption.

“Me? I didn’t care if they were rich or poor, if they were good or bad. I did my duty by them, never a moment of impatience. I made myself as comfortable as I could for them every single time, but then—”

The bed frame began to jerk, and Sagandran realized that it was sobbing. There was something immensely tragic in the spectacle.

“Ooooooooh,” said the bed in a drawn-out wail. “It’s a cruel, cruel thing, is age.”

“Oh, pipe down and stop feeling so sorry for yourself, you old twit,” said a fresh voice pitilessly. A tall lamp with a battered shade bent its neck toward the bed, making Sagandran think of a child’s stick drawing of a giraffe. “All you guys ever do is complain, complain, complain. What about me? My story’s one that’ll make your hair stand straight up, not that you have any hair. Let me tell you how it was—”

“You’re as bad as they are,” snarled a dolls’ house that lacked its front and half a side wall. “Stop your blabbering and blubbering, you sorry lot. Can’t you get it into your heads? They dumped us because they didn’t want us any more, and they’re
never – coming – back
!”

There was one of those silences that felt like a rigid wall of ice.

Then a stuffed panda with one leg missing shifted its solitary eye. “But … but she said she’d never leave me. She said we’d be together for always and ever.”

“Tough luck, babe,” said the bed. “The doll house is right. They never keep their promises, humans don’t. After they’ve used up the best years of our lives, they just abandon us here like we never meant nothing to nobody. It’s enough to make you wish that you weren’t made in the first place.”

The bed started its piteous, juddering sobs once more.

All at once there was silence again, but this time the silence of peace.

“What happened?” said Sir Tombin.

“Oh, the effects of the speech tinsel wore off,” said Samzing airily. “Clever stuff, isn’t it? I wonder why I made it in the first place.”

He regarded the purple bag ruminatively, as if contemplating the wisdom of giving the junk another dose.

“I think we’d better be on our way,” said Sir Tombin firmly. “Keep the rest of it for another time, eh? Save it. Never know when a dash of speech tinsel won’t come in handy, if you understand me.”

Samzing gave a little shrug of agreement and stowed the bag away in his robe. By now it was almost evening, and soon they’d have to start looking for somewhere to spend the night. As they picked their way through and around the ever more numerous piles of trash, Sagandran was uneasily aware of being the focus of angry, jealous, accusatory or betrayed gazes. Guiltily, he kept his eyes on the ground in front of him, as if that hid him from the sight of all the broken toys, appliances and furniture.

At last, they came to a place where the ground was relatively clear. Lots of broken wooden boxes formed a ring, as if they were waiting to watch a sporting event. The boxes were far more pleasant to look at than the rest of the contents of the Great Junkyard, and they smelled better too; except when a breeze swept the stench of decay across the great plain of garbage in their direction, it was almost possible for the companions to forget where they were. A piece of foul-smelling paper flew right into Sagandran’s face.

“Yuck,” he said and was just about to throw it aside when he noticed something. It appeared to be a very old “wanted” poster. It was hard to make out the picture, but it reminded Sagandran of a wolf or perhaps a fox. The text
had been almost worn away over time and bleached by the sun for centuries, but finally, with some difficulty, he made it out. 

“Who is or was this Captain Rustbane?” Sagandran asked, cleaning his face with the sleeve of his jacket.

“Hm,” Samzing mused. “Yes, I think I’ve read about it somewhere. It’s more of a Sagaria legend, really.”

“I remember reading about him too – in a history book,” Sir Tombin added. “A real knave of the most unspeakable ill repute, that fellow was. According to the legend, Rustbane, who was a pirate captain, was apparently killed by a hamster.”

“Actually, I think it was a lemming,” Samzing said. “Anyway, throw that thing away, Sagandran. It must have germs on it. I’m sure you can read about it in a book somewhere.” Sir Tombin looked around him. “Not ideal,” summarized Sir Tombin, dropping his backpack to the ground and encouraging the rest to do the same, “but considerably better than it could have been. We’re making good speed, even if that may not seem to be so. Tomorrow, we should be able to cross the Junk Mountains and be on to the Never Plains. By then we’ll be almost to the city of Qarnapheeran, and then …”

He stopped, reluctant to say the name of where they’d go after that. The Shadow World. Even the thought of it was frightening. The name sounded among them as clearly as if Sir Tombin had spoken it, sending a sense of despair deep within them.

“We’ll have to face it when we get there,” said Sagandran stoutly. “The more we try to banish the idea from our minds now, the worse the reality will be.”

“At least we’ll all be facing it together,” murmured Perima quietly.

Flip had climbed down the back of Sir Tombin’s cape to stand on the ground. “One for all and all for one,” he cried proudly. “Didn’t I read that somewhere?”

Sagandran, despite the solemnity of the moment, grinned at his little friend. “I think you probably did.” It wasn’t until much later, waking briefly in the night, that he wondered how a rodent from Mishmash could have gotten hold of a copy of an Earthworld novel, let alone read it.

Sir Tombin coughed shyly. “Firewood,” he said. “I need some volunteers to
gather firewood, and don’t” – he raised a webbed hand in admonition as Perima, Sagandran and Flip moved to obey – “even think of breaking up any old bits of furniture to burn, do you hear?”

Astonishingly, there proved to be trees standing amid the long rolling foothills of the Junk Mountains. Quite a few had given up the struggle to survive in soil that must have been polluted many times over by the centuries’ accumulation of trash, so it didn’t take too long for Perima and Sagandran to find a big armful of dead branches apiece.

When they got back to the camp, Flip was just arriving from another direction. He was staggering under the weight of something he’d found, but was bright with a grin of satisfaction.

“What in heaven’s name is that?” said Samzing.

“Treasure,” said Flip. “There’s all sorts of treasure out there, if you have the wits to see it for what it is.”

“That’s not treasure,” said Samzing, stooping to peer at the object the rodent was carrying. “It’s a rusty old tin can.”

“Right,” said Flip, “and wrong. It’s a rusty old
unopened
tin can.”

“I’d leave it unopened if I were you,” said Sir Tombin with a chuckle. “Whatever’s in there is probably a century or two old. You’re likely to give yourself food poisoning just thinking about it.”

“Imagine the smell,” said Perima, dumping her load of wood and sitting down. “You really are the most revolting little creature, Flip.” She reached across and rubbed the fur on the top of his head to take the sting out of her words.

Flip giggled. “I’m going to keep it anyway.” He lugged the can over to Sagandran’s open bag and, grunting with the strain, heaved it in.

“You’re just giving Sagandran extra weight to carry,” said Perima more severely.

“Oh, it’s all right,” said Sagandran, seeing Flip’s sudden crestfallen look. “It can’t be heavy. I don’t mind.”

Sir Tombin soon had a fire going, but they had nothing to cook on it. They ate the last of the stale bread and apples from Snowmane’s saddle bags, trying to persuade themselves that the food was delicious and filling. Samzing went into a long monologue about the gastronomic wonders to be found in Qarnapheeran. If his intention had been to take their minds off the gnawing pangs of hunger, he failed miserably.

“Oh, shut up,” Perima snapped at him eventually. She was investigating the apple core in her hand, as if just staring at it might make it more appetizing.

“Groig hmffle dreumhh,” said Flip’s muffled voice from inside Sagandran’s backpack.

“Translate, please,” said Samzing drily.

Flip popped his head out.

“I’ve nearly finished getting this can open,” he said proudly. “I’ll bet you whatever’s inside it is going to be really scrumptious, you’ll see.”

“How?” said Sagandran.

“By tasting it, of course,” replied Flip, pausing on his way back into the pack.

“No, I meant, how are you getting the can open?”

“With my teeth, how else?”

“Doesn’t it, well—?”

“We grow tough teeth in Mishmash,” said Flip. He made it sound as though his teeth were ready to challenge their teeth to a fight any day.

“It’s a long way to the nearest dentist,” remarked Perima to the empty air.

“Fusspot,” mumbled Flip, vanishing again. “Women. Hon-est-
lee
!”

“You know,” said Sir Tombin, looking nervous for once, “I really think perhaps we ought to ask our diminutive friend to desist from this enterprise. We have no conception of what may reside within that aluminum container he is so assiduously endeavoring to perforate.”

It took Sagandran a moment to interpret this statement in his mind. “Yes,” he said eventually. “I think you’re right. It could be a sort of Pandora’s box, releasing plague and pestilence, just for starters.”

“Who’s this Pandora?” asked Perima pointedly.

Before Sagandran could begin to explain, there was a high squeal of triumph from the interior of his backpack.

“Done it.”

The stillness that followed was heavy with disappointment. Then, “It’s empty,” said Flip, sounding cheated.

He rolled the open can out of the backpack in front of him.

“If it was empty,” said Perima, “how come it weighed so much more before you opened it?”

Flip looked at her, then looked at the can again and scratched his head.

“Maybe it wasn’t so empty after—” he began, then his jaw dropped.

“Huh?” said Sagandran, also staring.

A little cloud of green smoke they hadn’t noticed before, just next to the open flap of the backpack, was slowly growing, its color slowly darkening. As they continued to watch, it began to swirl and change shape until suddenly, as if it had always been that way, it was a tiny man, almost exactly the same height as the can was. The lower part of his body was still a waft of smoke, but the upper part was clad in a green robe made of some material that it was hard to focus
on. He had a small, somewhat untidy goatee which was extended at the chin into a knotted curl, and he wore a battered turban with an incongruously large, dull-faceted jewel in its center. An air of disreputability hung about him, which was even thicker than the smoke.

He looked around at each of the companions in turn and yawned, then made a clumsy bow.

“At your service you will find me, and I can grant you wishes three. For as I’m sure you all can see, I am the djinn of this can of, uh, well, I guess it could have been tea.”

“Was that supposed to be a poem?” said Sagandran, amazed not so much by the abrupt appearance of a djinn in their midst as by how appalling the verse was. It seemed he’d become sufficiently inured to the strangeness of Sagaria that the magical was becoming commonplace; but bad verse was bad verse, wherever you were in the three worlds.

The djinn, looking embarrassed, put a hand up to his turban and fiddled with it, much as Sagandran often saw Perima fiddling with a lock of her hair.

“At poetry, alack, alas, I was the last djinn in the class,” he explicated. “When other djinns had meter gotten, I still was rhyming something rotten.”

“Is it possible for you to not speak in rhymes?” said Perima, wincing.

“Well, ne’er say do and ne’er say die, but for a fair maid, I can try,” announced the djinn chivalrously. “Oops. Dammit. Rhymed again.”

“About those three wishes?” said Samzing languidly, as if he were only mildly interested.

The djinn turned toward him. “For your orders I’m athirst, so who will make me wish the first?”

“Me, me, me,” cried Flip and began jumping up and down. “A gooseberry! No, wait, wait! The
biggest
gooseberry in the world.”

“If that is your command, master.” The djinn began murmuring in some strange language. There was a sudden
poof
of smoke. On the ground in front of them lay a …