The Elfin Ship (2 page)

He waited for a moment for the airship to reappear, and when it didn’t, he took his mug and his book and wandered inside to cook up some sort of stew. ‘It’s a funny day to be out sailing in the sky,’ Jonathan thought. ‘Not at all a pleasant day for that sort of thing. Something must be afoot.’ But the ways of the elves were always a mystery, and mysteries are almost always better left unsolved. After all, the fun of a mystery is that it is one.

The sun went down and it was a terribly dark night with thunder cracking and clouds whirling overhead caught in a frantic wind that couldn’t seem to make up its mind which way to blow next. Jonathan piled the fireplace with oak logs, and, full from supper, slumped back in a great fat armchair and put his feet up onto a footstool. He looked at Ahab who was curled up before the hearth and considered the possibility of teaching him to smoke a pipe. But the idea, he quickly saw, wasn’t a good one. Dogs might not go for pipes anyway, being dogs, and so the whole plan seemed a washout. He puffed away thinking about what a grand thing it was to be able to enjoy a good book and to be warm and dry and full of good food and have the finest fire and armchair in the village. ‘Better than being a thousand kings,’ he thought, but he didn’t entirely know what he meant by it.

He’d dozed off after having barely begun
The Tale of the Goblin Wood,
by G. Smithers of Brompton Village, when someone began pounding away at his door, causing Ahab to leap about, awake but still embroiled in a strange dream involving toads. Jonathan swung open the door and there, shaking the water from his coat, stood Gilroy Bastable, Jonathan’s nearest neighbor and mayor of Twombly Town.

He had a look about him that seemed to indicate annoyance, an attitude that was not surprising, for he was splashed with mud, and his hair, which grew mostly on the sides of his head, spiraled away in either direction like two curly mountain peaks turned sideways. He wore a heavy greatcoat and a pair of immense woolen gloves which smelled a bit gamey as wool does when it gets wet. Mayor Bastable, clearly, had been in the thick of the storm.

Jonathan waved him in and shut the door against the cold wind. First it was airships, then Gilroy Bastable, all out under peculiar circumstances. ‘H’lo there, Gilroy! Quite a night out, wouldn’t you say? Could be described as a wet one if it came to descriptions, don’t you think?’

Gilroy Bastable seemed to say something but his meaning was unclear, his teeth, somehow, got in the way. Ahab, having realized that there was no threat from toads, wandered over and laid his head on Bastable’s boot, intending to sleep. He discovered, however, that the shoe was too wet and muddy to be altogether comfortable so he padded back to his spot before the fire.

‘Filthy night out; that’s what I call it. Full of mud holes and hurricanes. Blew my hat into the river. I saw it with my own eyes right here in my head. Hat sails off spinning like the widow’s windmill, turns round the church steeple twice, then lands smack and was gone in the river. Brand new hat. Hideous night.’

‘Does make you feel a bit snug though when you’re in out of it,’ said Jonathan.

‘Snug!’ the mayor shouted, mainly through his nose. ‘My hat’s gone downriver!’

‘Unfortunate. Very bad business indeed,’ said Jonathan, who was sympathetic. But it was as much his night as it was the mayor’s and he was determined that nothing should spoil it. He hung Bastable’s coat and muffler near the fire to dry, and with a good deal of struggling between the two of them they managed to pry his boots off and set them beneath the coat and muffler. Ahab awoke momentarily and, mistaking the lumps of boots for something else, considered eating them. But he thought better of it and nodded off again.

Bastable sat across from Jonathan’s chair, calming down due to the effects of the fire. A good fire, as you know, is second only to hot punch in the way of soothing. Jonathan walked out to the kitchen and soon emerged with a platter and two steaming mugs. He set the works down next to the mayor and popped out and back in again with the most amazing cheese, all red and orange and yellow swirls and round like Ahab’s head. Gilroy Bastable, already wading into the punch, was astounded.

‘Aye!’ he bubbled. ‘What’s that! A cheese, I believe, or my hat’s not downriver.’ He looked at it closely and poked an inquisitive finger at it as it lay there. Jonathan cut a slice or two, and the mayor, raising his mug and nodding his head, tied into it manfully. ‘Why, I’m a codfish!’ he said through a mouthful of cheese, his manners having gone out the window due to the heartiness of the thing. ‘There’s a taste here I know. Port wine, I believe it is. Am I mistaken, or what?’

‘No, sir,’ said Jonathan. ‘Port wine it is, and not your dog-faced port from Beezle’s market either. I made this with Autumn Auburn from the delta.’

‘No!’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Jonathan. ‘And with a little of this and a thimbleful of that, I think you’ll agree, it’s just the thing on a night such as this.’

The mayor, finally, had to say that it was, and if all had gone along those lines much longer, he would have forgotten about his escaped hat and been convinced, as was Jonathan, that the storm outside was one of the finest he’d encountered.

He pushed down a last mouthful, however, and his eyes clouded over like the skies outside. The corners of his mouth turned down and stuck there, causing Jonathan to fear that part of his cheese had gone bad and that the mayor had wandered into it. Such was not the case though. Gilroy Bastable had suddenly remembered why he had braved the storm and lost his hat and slopped mud up and down his trouser legs and over his greatcoat. He had come with grim sorts of news.

‘See here, Jonathan,’ he began in a tone so filled with authority that it woke Ahab from a deep sleep. ‘I haven’t just come slogging over here for a lark, you know. No indeed.’

‘Oh?’ said Jonathan, rather disappointed. He much preferred larks to serious business.

‘No, sir! I’ve come about the traders.’

‘Which traders are these now?’ asked Jonathan, not really concerned yet but being polite out of regard for the mayor, who seemed about to pop from the importance of his mission.

Old Bastable looked at Jonathan bug-eyed. ‘Why which traders do ye suppose, Master Cheeser? Do we have such a crowd of ’em that we can pick and choose which ones we’d wade knee-deep through a hurricane to chat about?’

Jonathan had to admit that the mayor was right although he could see no reason to bluster about it. ‘That would be the traders of Willowood then,’ he said, putting on a serious look ‘Have they been caught dipping into the cargo again? Trading to the linkmen for brandy and hen’s teeth?’

‘Worse than that,’ replied old Bastable, leaning forward in his chair and squinting like a schoolteacher. ‘They’ve absconded – disappeared!’

‘They’ve what!’ cried Jonathan, interested finally in the mayor’s story. ‘How?’

‘Why walked away, I suppose. Or, more likely, sailed away downriver. Willowood is deserted. No one’s there.’

In truth, Jonathan was only a week or so away from his own annual journey from Hightower to the trading station at Willowood Village where the traders would give him a note for the Christmas cheese, transport it downriver to the edge of the sea, and return with honeycakes. He’d accomplish all of that, that is, if there
were
traders at Willowood. But why, one might ask, would anyone suppose otherwise? And it was just such a question which Jonathan posed to Gilroy Bastable.

‘Because word’s come up from Hightower,’ said Bastable. ‘They found the Willowood Station looted and smacked up. Deserted, it is, and the wharf is gone. Or at least half of it is – all off down the river. Whole place gone to smash. Now, Wurzle says it’s pirates and Beezle says it’s flood, and the bunch from Hightower say the traders went downriver to the sea just out of lunacy.’

‘Like lemmings,’ offered Jonathan.

‘Just so,’ said Bastable. ‘And me, well I don’t pretend to know, but they’ve gone, and that’s sure.’

‘I don’t like the sound of this,’ Jonathan said ominously. ‘Something’s afoot. I saw an airship today.’

‘In a storm like this? Very odd, an airship in a storm like this.’

‘Just what I said myself. And then here you come, out in the rainy night like a duck.’

Bastable was at a loss for words. He could see that, as he’d hoped, his news had startled Jonathan, but he wasn’t sure of all this duck business. ‘See here,’ he began in a mildly questioning tone. ‘I’m not sure that ducks – ’

But Jonathan cut him off short, although under normal circumstances he wouldn’t consider doing so. ‘My cheeses!’ he cried, and Ahab, noting the perilous tone in his master’s voice was up and racing toward the kitchen at a gallop, toppling a chair, setting the rest of the ball of cheese into flight, and careening off a stout wooden breadcupboard before becoming sensible again. He wandered back across the wooden floorboards of the kitchen and peered around the sideboard at the two men who sat astounded, gaping at him.

‘The news has rather upset your hound, Jonathan,’ said Gilroy Bastable, retrieving the cheese and gouging out a hunk the size of his nose. ‘And well it should. Do you know, Jonathan, what the word about town is?’

‘Not a bit,’ said the Cheeser.

‘The cry goes round, my man, that you’re a stout enough lad to sail downriver yourself, all the way to Seaside with your cheeses and back again with cakes and elfin gifts.’

‘Stout lad, is it!’ shouted Jonathan, astounded at the suggestion and calculating the time it would take to make such a journey – weeks, surely. ‘It’s a fool’s idea; that’s what it is.’

‘But the people will have no cakes!’ protested Gilroy Bastable.

‘Then let them eat bread,’ Jonathan almost replied before wisely reconsidering. It
would
be a sad holiday without honeycakes, not to mention elfin gifts for the children. But then again, the very idea of sailing down the Oriel through the dark hemlock forests to the sea frightened him.

Bastable could see that Jonathan was in a turmoil and knew that turmoils are bad things to go butting into, so he let the matter stand. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’m not one to make such statements, for a man has to do what he has to do. I think you’ll agree to that.’

Jonathan gurgled a reply and poked his forefinger into the cheese, stabbing little craters into its surface until it sat on its plate like a moon plucked from a miniature sky – half a moon, that is to say, for Gilroy Bastable had eaten the other half and, until he saw that Jonathan had fingered it so completely, he was prepared to shove down the remaining half.

‘I say,’ said Gilroy, ‘you’ve gone and ruined the cheese.’

‘What? Me?’ Jonathan said, lost in thought. ‘Oh, yes. I suppose I have. Poked it full of holes, haven’t I?’ He picked up the punctured lump of yellow, tore off a sizable hunk and rolled it toward Ahab who, it seemed, could smell it approaching even though he was again deeply lost in sleep, dreaming this time about finding a great treasure made of beef bones and ice cream, the two great passions of a dog’s life. Somehow the ball of cheese became connected to the idea of ice cream in his dream, and Ahab scooped it up and, still asleep, mashed it about in his mouth for a moment before the odd flavor and weird texture of the cheese made him lurch awake, fearful that he’d been poisoned. There are few things more unpleasant than innocently eating or drinking one thing when you mistakenly suppose you’ve gotten hold of something else.

Once awake, however, Ahab forgot about the treasure dream and, being a cheeser’s dog, quickly determined the nature of that which he ate. He swallowed heartily and, as his master and Gilroy Bastable were clumping toward the door, Ahab thought it a first-rate idea to have another go at the last chunk of wrecked cheese on the plate.

Outside, the wind was still blowing in fits and gusts that sailed right down the center of the valley between the mountains. The forest was a black line against the wild sky. When there was a break in the clouds, the moonlight would creep out across patches of the valley and, as if by enchantment, the dark fringe of the woods would cast wavering shadows along the hillsides. Rocks and bushes and clumps of raspberry vine that were familiar and friendly in the light of day soon became strange and forbidding night shapes, weirdly lit and twisted beneath the moon. Jonathan was glad it was Gilroy Bastable and not himself who had to trudge away through the nighttime. At least the rain had stopped. If the wind continued to howl, it would pursue the last of the clouds to the ocean by morning, and the day would dawn clear beneath a cool autumn sun.

The mayor assured Jonathan that this business about river travel would surely be brought up in the morning. The next day was market day, and a meeting was planned at the Guildhall to discuss the Willowood doings and the fate of the holiday celebrations.

After returning to his chair by the fire, Jonathan picked up
The Tale of the Goblin Wood
and tried to read. He pretended that the issue of sailing to sea was closed and that his unconcerned reading proved it. But he merely looked at words on the page and found that after working through a page or two, he hadn’t any idea of what he had read. ‘A stout enough lad,’ he said aloud to himself, and Ahab, who was sitting in the chair opposite, naturally thought it was he who was being spoken to and was half afraid that Jonathan would scold him over the disappeared cheese.

‘Stout lad is it? Surely,’ thought Jonathan, ‘I
am
the Master Cheeser, and I
do
have a fine little raft, and I am, I suppose, the man in the village best suited for an adventure such as this. Still, weeks of travel through the long miles of empty river …’ The proposal, a bit much for the Cheeser, was best pondered by the light of day. Late at night sometimes, things seemed deeper and smokier than they were.