Captains Stupendous

by Rhys Hughes

  This was no lie. The canopy was already swelling.

  I went to awaken Rais Uli.

  He stirred from his slumber with a groan.

  ‘Are the djinns prancing?’

  ‘No, no,’ I assured him, ‘but something else has happened.’

  He opened his eyes and sighed.

  ‘Your don’t have a basket, Monsieur Faraway. How will you fly under such a vehicle without a basket?’

  ‘I will cling on,’ replied Distanto, ‘in a special way.’

  ‘What way is that?’ I blurted.

  ‘Tight. It’s not ideal, but the ground irks me. I must be free of it again, no matter how great the gamble!’

  ‘Leave him to his folly,’ advised Rais Uli.

  I nodded and sat down, away from the blast of the furnace. The desert son and I watched the balloon inflate bigger and bigger. Suddenly it rose into the velvet sky, Distanto holding on beneath it. He dangled with perfect confidence, needing only one hand. He waved with the other. The breeze caught him and he vanished.

  ‘He won’t get far,’ said Rais Uli, ‘for the hot air inside the canopy will soon cool; but he’s a desperate man.’

  ‘Yes, he loves the stratosphere. He should have been born a cloud, not a human being. I feel sorry for the locals when they discover their clothes are missing. Will they blame us?’

  ‘Probably not me, but almost certainly you.’

  ‘Because I am a skeleton?’

  He nodded. ‘It makes you a more likely suspect.’

  ‘What shall we do?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ll go first and speak to them. I’m famed for my eloquence. You wait an hour and then follow; the shock will be less after I smooth the way. It might be a good idea to flesh you out.’

  ‘What do you mean by that, Rais Uli?’ I wondered.

  ‘A new face can be moulded for you from river clay. Your bony limbs can be coated in the same manner.’

  ‘But if my fungus is covered, I won’t be able to see.’

  ‘We’ll leave one fingertip bare.’

  This was an ingenious solution to my difficulty and I lay full length on my back while Rais Uli scooped handfuls of wet clay from the riverbank, applying them skilfully to my bones; he made arms, legs and a believable visage for me. When the sun rose, he told me to stand facing it, to dry the clay and stop my fake flesh oozing off me in clumps. I did as he bade and the sun coaxed steam from my gunk.

  Rais Uli strode along to the village, which was just out of sight around a bend in the river. I heard nothing, no babble of voices, no cows, nothing at all. An hour passed and my face was baked hard. I flexed my limbs; the clay remained in position. Time for me to follow my companion. My gait was stiff but workable. I reached the village in less than ten minutes. As I entered it, I saw that I was expected.

  The village elders sat in the shade of an enormous tree; and they were facing me. Rais Uli was with them. He rose and gestured, smiling. Many of the elders frowned. I felt dizzy as I approached, my exposed forefinger held up before me as if poking an imaginary soft fruit. The smile of Rais Uli never wavered for an instant. I stopped in front of him and felt bathed in the scrutiny of two dozen old men.

  ‘I told them you were ugly, but wise,’ said Rais Uli.

  ‘Thank you,’ I answered calmly.

  ‘Smile at them, smile at them!’ he urged.

  I did so. My entire face cracked.

  It had been baked too hard. It was an unglazed face.

  The cracks widened. The face broke.

  In three large pieces my visage fell to the ground.

  And shattered into crumbs there!

  The elders jumped to their feet, pointing and shouting. I didn’t speak a word of their language but the meaning of their words was obvious. ‘Not a man but a skeleton! He’s a bony freak! We can’t have that around here. He must be dealt with severely, eh?’

  The Midget

  Rais Uli did his best to restrain them; but although he remained a figure of respect to them, his influence was rather limited. He had no power to make them desist from manhandling me.

  They trussed me up with cords; and the cords were attached to a stake that was planted in the ground in the tiny central square of the village. It’s never nice being tied up by people who hate you, but in this case I feared an extra cruel and unusual punishment.

  There was a merchant in the village who knew a little Arabic; thus he was able to communicate the plans of the elders to Rais Uli, who relayed them to me. An execution had been scheduled for that morning anyway. Thus my arrival was seen as fortuitous.

  Rais Uli explained, ‘There’s a midget who lives here, a fellow so tiny that he always looks as if he’s stood far away when you are talking to him, and he has been accused of magic.’

  ‘Black magic?’ I supposed.

  ‘No, purple magic actually. I’m not sure of the exact difference yet. It’s a strange dialect of Arabic that the merchant speaks. Anyway, they intend to kill the midget today. At noon …’

  ‘What does this have to do with me?’ I whimpered.

  ‘They plan to burn him alive.’

  ‘Very well. And yet—’

  Rais Uli leaned closer. ‘Inside you, my friend.’

  My jaw chattered. ‘Pardon?’

  ‘You are a skeleton, a walking cage. They will imprison the midget in the cavity formed by your ribs. Then they will pile firewood around you. The midget will burn like indigestion within you. Worse than indigestion, in fact. For the flames will be real.’

  ‘Can’t you do anything to help?’ I pleaded.

  ‘No,’ he answered simply.

  ‘Will you simply stand back and watch?’

  ‘Heavens, no! What an idea!’

  I was cheered by this response. ‘What will you do?’

  His reply crushed my spirits into a pulp even flatter than the puddle of slime they already resembled. ‘The merchant is leaving in an hour for the coast., He plans to take a dhow across the Arabian Sea to Oman. He asked me to accompany him. I wish to return to the Rif, my homeland. Oman is closer to the Rif than India, so—’

  ‘You backstabbing traitor!’ I sobbed dryly.

  ‘Mr Griffiths!’ he chided. ‘Where is it written that I, Mulai Ahmed el Rais Uli, am a gentle, kind person?’

  ‘Nowhere, I suppose,’ I conceded reluctantly.

  ‘I have been known to boil the eyes of my enemies with heated coins. I once imprisoned an adversary in a giant lute and goaded a mad baboon into playing febrile primal melodies on the instrument until the prisoner exploded. That is the truth of it.’

  ‘Fair enough. Point taken,’ I muttered.

  ‘Goodbye, Mr Griffiths.’

  ‘Farewell, Rais Uli. Take care at sea.’

  ‘I shall. Roast in peace.’

  And then, with a swirl of his cloak, he was gone. I never saw him ever again; but if you are interested in learning more about him, he does linger in certain history books on certain shelves. Personally I was happy to see the back of him, the filthy barbarian!

  The elders came out of the largest hut in the village, leading a midget on a chain. He squeaked in outrage.

  With considerable difficulty, they threaded and squeezed him into me, until he squatted behind my ribs, clutching my bones like the grim bars of an oubliette, the worst kind of dungeon.

  He ranted and raved in his own miniature language.

  The elders heaped firewood around.

  A flame was carefully applied!

  ‘Anws blewog!’ I cried.

  The Mongorgon

  The elders weren’t as clever as they thought they were. The first things to burn in the blaze were the cords that held me to the stake. I broke free of my captivity and stumbled through the burning logs, scattering them with my feet in random directions. Some rolled through the open doorways of nearby huts and set the huts on fire!

  In the confusion and chaos, I was able to make my escape. I ran as fast as I could out of the village. No-one followed me; th
ey were too intent on extinguishing the blaze and saving their homes. The midget laughed and I felt him shift position inside me like a hearty meal. Then he spoke, to my utter amazement, in my own tongue.

  Flabbergasted, I gasped, ‘You know Welsh!’

  ‘Yes. I’m from Swansea.’

  ‘How is that possible? You are a midget!’

  And I voiced other objections.

  He snarled back, ‘Don’t little men grow in Wales too? Of course they do! And I have dark skin. So what? And I speak Hindi, Urdu and Bangla. What’s the big deal? I also speak English, French, Spanish and Greek. I’m an engineer and I travel the world.’

  ‘What were you doing in this remote region?’

  ‘Preparing the ground for a railway. That village was supposed to be the terminus of a new line from Patna, but the elders didn’t care for such an innovation. I was welcomed when I first arrived, but that environment went sour. False accusations were made against me; charges not trumped up by an elephant but by humans!’

  ‘Yes, we are a despicable species,’ I pondered.

  ‘Well now, what’s your name?’

  ‘Lloyd Griffiths. Yours?’

  ‘Hywel Owl, it is.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Hywel.’ I could only shake his hand by groping inside my own chest like an Aztec who plucks out his own heart after he has sacrificed himself. ‘Are you the smallest engineer in the business? It must be difficult working with rivets.’

  I assumed he frowned. ‘How so?’

  ‘A rivet will be to you what a large bun is to me.’

  ‘That’s not a problem.’

  His tone was so unwavering that I was assured of the fact. Indeed, why shouldn’t little men excel at any task they are given? As I said before, the times were more prejudiced back then; we were full of absurd ideas about what was proper and what wasn’t. Sometimes, when I remember what the normal attitudes were between the years 1909 and 1986 I am ashamed. In my long life only the most recent decade has demonstrated even to a tiny degree that tolerance is practicable.

  ‘I wasn’t always an engineer,’ he told me. ‘I once was a hunter of that mythical beast known as a Xaratan; but that’s a different story for another time and place. Increase your pace, if you would, my friend. I suggest we head for Srinagar, where my railway company has an office. They will be very helpful. Take a right turn here.’

  We had reached a dusty crossroads; I obeyed him.

  All day and night I trudged.

  And the following day too. And the day after that.

  For many days. For weeks.

  It was a fantastic landscape, an impalement of mountains; raging white rivers full of melted glacier water rushed everywhere, spanned only by an antiquated series of rope bridges. At night we camped beneath large trees twisted to bizarre shapes by fickle winds and the demands of atmospheric imagery. I lit and huddled around fires; for Hywel was a normal man and shivered when cold. Ever had a midget shiver inside you? It’s not what I’d recommend as a beneficial event.

  I lost count of the days. Eventually we reached Srinagar.

  Self-consciously I walked the streets.

  Eyes swivelled in sockets.

  Fingers jabbed at us. Mouths gaped.

  At this precise point, I planned to reserve a paragraph to describe that wonderful city; to mention the sights we saw and the sounds we heard; to give the slightest impression of the colour, chaos, vibrancy of the place. It seemed the least service I might do you, the reader, who have come so far with me through these memoirs. But Hywel dissuaded me. His argument was ingenious. I present it here:

  ‘Any author might pick up a guide book and use that as a source of his information about a city he has never visited. If you describe Srinagar in a detached way, as you have described every location so far, readers will be forced to conclude you never went there. In short that you are a cheat and these adventures never happened!’

  It was a valid criticism. I thanked him for his advice.

  So don’t expect any background details.

  I want you to believe I was there!

  And thus I was. Hywel too.

  Before I withered under the rapacious gazes of the inquisitive citizens and merchants of Srinagar, we turned a corner and saw before us a minor office of the same railway company that employed my tiny friend. It was a drab building but welcome to our eyes. I opened the door, pushed into a dimly-lit room and approached a clerk who was seated at a desk in the far corner of the space. He looked up.

  ‘Have you made an appointment?’ he asked.

  ‘No. I am a skeleton,’ I said.

  ‘Ask to speak to the manager!’ hissed Hywel.

  ‘The manager please,’ I said.

  The clerk frowned at me, got up and went into a back room. His head reappeared in the doorway a minute later. ‘Come through. Mr Higgs will see you in his own private office.’

  ‘Lucky!’ squeaked Hywel. ‘I know him!’

  ‘Very fortunate,’ I agreed.

  I followed the clerk down a short corridor to another gloomy room. Mr Higgs was playing with an executive toy, one of those boyish devices that demonstrate the principle of the conservation of momentum between steel balls suspended from a rack. He was thoroughly engrossed in his sport, so much so that the clerk coughed to attract his attention. Mr Higgs frowned at me and said, ‘You look familiar.’

  I was astonished. ‘Really? Have we met before?’

  He waved a hand. ‘No, I meant that you bear an uncanny resemblance to the famous composer Borodin.’

  ‘Alexander Borodin? But he died in 1887.’

  ‘Exactly, dear boy! All his flesh must have rotted too by now.’

  And Mr Higgs burst into laughter.

  I fumed and opened my jaw to strike back with a deadly insult of my own, but it was the midget, Hywel Owl, who spoke first. ‘Mr Higgs, sir! Remember me, sir? It’s Hywel, sir!’

  Wiping his steamy spectacles on the cuff of his sweaty shirt, replacing them on his nose and squinting, Mr Higgs said, ‘Ah yes, Hywel! We gave you up for dead. What are you doing squatting inside that living skeleton? It’s not the most dignified position.’

  ‘I was forced into him by malign elders, sir!’

  I confirmed his story. ‘It’s true.’

  Mr Higgs remained unimpressed. ‘I’m not sure what you expect me to do about it. You didn’t come here hoping for another job, did you? That’s simply not possible, I’m afraid. You have proved yourself to be unreliable and unpredictable. Our company can’t afford to keep incompetents on the payroll; not even tiny incompetents.’

  And he giggled again. India had made him insane.

  Or maybe he had been even more insane before he arrived, and he had been partly cured by the overwhelming spirit of India, so that now he was only half a loon. But a damn big half.

  Hywel Owl stuttered, ‘What about severance pay?’

  ‘Half wages for a half man?’

  ‘That’s my right. Give me what you owe!’

  Mr Higgs remained unmoved. ‘Half pay for a half man entombed in a halfwit. Let’s see. That makes half of a half of a half. So one eighth of one hour’s normal pay. Total: one rupee.’

  ‘I dispute that calculation!’ squeaked Hywel.

  ‘Oh dear. There’s a clause in your original work contract that specifies that a midget who disputes, while occupying space inside a skeleton, any calculation made near a working executive toy, must forfeit all severance pay and be further liable to a fine of—’

  We didn’t get to hear the rest of it. I had fled out of the room, down the corridor and through the front door.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Hywel demanded.

  ‘We have no money,’ I muttered, ‘and if we must pay a fine, however unjust, we’ll end up in debtors’ prison. Better to forget seeking help from those cheats and look after ourselves!’

  He saw the wisdom of this. ‘Fair enough.’

  We hurried through the crowded streets. Men frowned at us; eyes full of
mirth or wonder twinkled. We turned a corner into a busy market. The people gathered there called out at us.

  ‘I don’t think living bones are welcome,’ said Hywel.

  ‘Maybe I leer too much?’ I asked.

  ‘Could be. Who knows? I think you should increase your speed. There is an atmosphere of peril here. Let’s go to the train station and try to jump on a train. Even if we are caught by an inspector and thrown off, we’ll be out of Srinagar at least! Quickly now!’

  This was good advice. We passed through the market at a trot. No man followed us, but something did. Something thin and low, sleek and agile. One of the market traders had let it loose. Was it a pet? I turned to glance over my shoulder and I shouted out:

  ‘A mongoose! They’ve set a mongoose on us!’

  Then I saw that it wasn’t precisely one of those famous animals. True, it had the body of a mongoose; but it had snakes for hair, little cobras and vipers that spat and hissed viciously.

  Hywel cried, ‘It’s a Mongorgon. We’re doomed!’

  The Steam Elephant

  ‘Pen pidlan gawsog!’ I breathed softly, and then I added, ‘What the heck is a Mongorgon? Does it truly exist?’

  Hywel nodded his head inside me. I felt rather than saw him do it; and the feeling wasn’t nice. ‘Yes. This is no hallucination. I told you I was an expert on mythic beasts. The Mongorgon has a particularly nasty bite that is fatal to midget-enhanced skeletons.’

  ‘What shall we do? I don’t want to die again …’

  ‘Have you died already then?’

  ‘Not sure. An army of proto-fascists did flay me; but I was already full of a rejuvenating brownish energy.’

  ‘That’s a tricky one,’ he acknowledged.

  ‘Think of something fast!’

  ‘Look! There’s the train station!’

  I swerved around an ox and bounded to the entrance.

  A guard gestured at me to stop.

  But I dodged past him, vaulted the ticket barrier and sprinted onto the platform. Yet there wasn’t a train in sight! Our hopes of getting a free ride on a locomotive that was just pulling out were decisively dashed. Up the platform I went, and back down it.