by Hughes, Rhys
We sipped the tea, which turned out to be an infusion of betel leaves rather than peppermint, then embarked on our journey. The yeti’s strong hands grasped my ankles and held me aloft while he slipped his hairy feet into the straps of his own stilts and hopped upright with incredible agility. We set off at alarming speed.
“What’s the weather like up there?” he joked.
“I can see for miles. I’m drunk with freedom and wind and smeared in the glow of the rising sun, blowing kisses at the fading stars, an emperor of a backdoor rainforest surveying his emerald realm from the vantage of stilted stilts. That’s how I am.”
“Yes, but what’s it like?” he pressed.
I couldn’t answer, for I was too exhilarated, too invigorated, too dizzy, and only with the most extreme effort could I recall that my duty was to watch for the non-sequitur store. It wasn’t in evidence. No sign of the wig emporium either. Just gardens.
We bounded over one decaying wall into a rockery where cacti in their sappy sentience daydreamed about spiking ears or getting students drunk and disgusted in cahoots with maguey worms. Probably. The vicious dogs that MeMeMeMeMe had warned me about were plentiful here but with their rabid drools safely below.
Another wall, another garden. An endless patchwork of gardens with a wall between each one. Some walls were higher than others. One was so high it could only be reached by using a leaning elm as a ramp. We strode along the top, searching for a way down the other side. At that moment I was the most elevated thing in the circumference of my vision. Or was I? A shadow smothered my pride.
“What the heck?” cried MeMeMeMeMe.
“Hot air balloon,” I replied.
“It’s very low. Ask directions from it.”
I took his advice. The basket swung next to my head, its occupant so close to my mouth that I was easily understood when I asked, “Is there a non-sequitur store hereabouts?”
Lower drifted the globe until I could see that the basket was stuffed to the brim with antique junk and curious artistic objects, tools, lamps, coils of rope, robes, machines, bottles, kettles, books and similar random items and the balloonist was almost lost among them. Doffing his hat to expose another hat, he responded:
“Haven’t seen one, but I can sell you a non-sequitur myself if you’re so keen on acquiring them. I have a single pristine example left. I’m a sort of aerial bric-a-brac merchant.”
“May I inspect the product on offer?”
“No time for that. Due to my dependency on the wind, which is fickle at the best of times, my business has to be conducted rapidly, without the standard niceties of examination and haggling. You’ll have to purchase it on the strength of my recommendation alone. But it’s in perfect condition and won’t ever let you down.”
And he quoted a surprising sum at me.
I wanted to ignore the temptation and turn away, but either my hand or wallet suddenly developed a mind of its own, for I found myself passing a fistful of new banknotes over.
“Remember prudence,” MeMeMeMeMe hissed.
“Don’t worry,” I said, “for if the non-sequitur turns out to be deficient, I’ll simply reach out with my stick and thrash this conman to an excessive degree. That’s my insurance.”
“I can tell I’m dealing with a shrewd customer,” smirked the balloonist approvingly. Then he rummaged among the miscellaneous objects at his feet and picked up a box, small but very heavy, made of iridium or some other awfully dense metal.
“Catch!” he shrieked as he threw it at me.
That box nearly knocked me off my perch, but a yeti’s grip is mythical as well as legendary, so I fully absorbed the impact without plummeting to my destruction. Free of its expensive ballast, the balloon rose into the sky with fantastic velocity and I realised this was the balloonist’s normal method of escaping retribution.
I craned my neck up at a steep angle and cupped my hands around my mouth. “Who exactly are you?”
“Tommy Tindertub,” he called back faintly, and I was satisfied when I heard that, because it gave me a definite name to curse if it turned out I’d been swindled by a charlatan.
Then I opened his box and looked inside.
*
The streets of Huknibonk-on-Stench are narrow and cobbled and often in the festive season flooded with cheap wine that pours into the low plazas from the high taverns that crowd about the citadel hill. A man who climbs up at those times ought to wear rubber boots, unless the drying of socks is a special hobby of his, and the same applies to women. Discrimination of gender counts for naught in that place when it comes to drunken glee and immodest revels. They are all ravers. The smoking of crystallised cocaine is also popular but less common.
The city smells rotten not just because of the human waste tipped from open windows out of traditional chamber pots decorated with scenes from the writings of the Bad Ochre Poets but chiefly due to its location above a stinking marsh. The hidden quicksands still gurgle and gulp and buildings sink another inch every month. Some authorities even attest that wills-o’-the-wisp seep up in thin spirals through cracks in the pavements to dance without music on the longest night, but these ‘authorities’ are inspectors of tax and trusted by nobody at all.
The worst of the Bad Ochre Poets was probably Cassius Befuddle. His complete works can only be borrowed from public libraries with a special permit, rarely issued, and nobody ever talks about him, despite the pots in every bedroom that feature illustrations from his sonnets. But this present tale isn’t concerned with his existence, so no secrets will have to be prised from sealed lips, no confidences broken. Prudence Mooncup is the main character instead, a dreamy student at a decaying university that is nearly always closed for another holiday.
Prudence had chosen aeronautics as her subject, for she greatly craved a career in the sky, but the professors who only occasionally turned up to deliver lectures already knew less about that science than did she. Full of liquid and vaporous stimulants, those gowned dunces drew simple wings, engines and propellers on the blackboard with chalk and made derogatory remarks about landing gear and ailerons. Then they would yawn, abandon the lesson with a shrug of malnourished shoulders and devote themselves to the consumption of more wine.
Our heroine remained dissatisfied with this style of teaching, but there was no place for her to lodge complaints. The chancellor of the university was a drunkard bigger than the rest, an old soak with literal gin tears who hoped to lighten the duties of the professors in his charge still further and reduce his own working hours to zero. His goal was for the university to open half a day every year and no more. His ears were deafer than lemon slices to Prudence’s protests, his contemptuous spittle like old tonic water. She could expect no aid from him.
And so she progressed painfully slowly with her studies. Most of what she learned came from observation and experiment. She watched the few birds brave enough to fly over Huknibonk-on-Stench and made accurate notes from which she was able to design and construct model ornithopters that flapped over filthy roofs like severed applause. But always her flying machines rapidly ran out of power and crashed. One midnight a drunken tax inspector was felled by her analogue of an owl and remained prostrate until the end of the financial year.
Something had to be done. An answer must be found. But how, where, when? She often roamed the streets, wading in wine, ignoring the hisses and whispers from shadowy doorways, never with a fixed destination in mind, until she found herself back at the stairway that spiralled tightly to her lonely attic. But on one occasion she strayed further than usual, ended up on the steepest slope of the citadel hill, sat on a boulder and wept over the wasted opportunities below. Snatches of inebriated song reached her, the fumes of champagne and crack.
“All I want is a solution to the riddle of excessive power consumption in heavier-than-air flying devices based on the flapping wing technique of nocturnal birds of prey!” she wailed.
“Is that really so much to ask for?” she added.
; Then she frowned deeply. “Wait a moment! I don’t believe it was me who made that second remark. It came from above, from a male throat, and I’m down below and female!”
She gazed up. A hot air balloon was descending slowly and it finally halted very close to her head, hovering there with its burner reduced to a minimal flame. The occupant of the wicker basket wore two simultaneous hats at least and introduced himself with a courtesy restricted by the mass of bizarre junk around him. He resembled a peg inserted into an eccentric uncle’s pocket, you know the kind I mean. Prudence was less shocked and intrigued by his arrival than might be expected, for now she was a jaded woman, beyond simple reactions.
“You’re in luck,” announced Tommy Tindertub.
“Why’s that?” she sighed.
“Because I have just the thing you’re after. But it’ll cost you dear, for I desire the object myself. Yet I’m a trader through and through, so I’ll give you a chance to purchase it first.”
He quoted a price at her and she gasped.
“I thought I was beyond amazement, but clearly I’m not, for that figure truly made me quiver,” she said.
“It can easily be doubled,” declared Tommy.
“No thanks. I’ll settle for the first price if I decide to buy. But are you sure you’re offering me the secret of heavier than air flight? I don’t count balloons as authentic aviation.”
“You won’t be disappointed, young lady.”
“Here’s the bulk of my savings. I shouldn’t do this but either my hand or purse has evolved a mind of its own and wants you to take this fistful of banknotes. Where’s the secret?”
“Catch!” roared Tommy as he shot up.
Prudence snatched the object that came spinning at her. “A bottle! One lousy bottle of non-sequiturs! I detest fresh non-sequiturs but the pickled variety are even worse. It’s not even full, but empty! I’ve been conned by a hoodwinker with extra headgear. But it’s an old bottle and the cork pops out with a giggle. What’s this?”
Up rose a genie with expanding turban and benevolence. “Any wish at all is yours. If it’s logical I’ll do my best. Don’t wish for extra wishes. That loophole was closed ages ago.”
Prudence fumed. “Of all the fabulous things that come from the East, a genie is one I can do without.”
“Sorry to hear that,” said the genie.
“I’d rather have a magic carpet. They can fly but don’t need wings. All the lift is generated by the shape of the rug itself. As for propulsion, they don’t require engines or fuel.”
“Like frisbees,” ventured the genie.
“Not quite. You should be teaching at the local university if that’s the way your intellect operates.”
And so it appeared. A magic carpet. Woven by the slaves of perverted monks in icy Tibetan sweatshops from yeti hair, which naturally levitates, hence the necessity for it to grow downwards into scalps to stop it flying off. Prudence Mooncup mounted it and carefully sat in the exact middle with crossed legs and fingers. The fibres itched her upper thighs, exposed legs being her one concession to bohemianism. Smooth, creamy. And she flew away. Soon enough, Huknibonk-on-Stench was no more than a stain on a world tablecloth far below.
Remember Prudence, for Prudence is wise.
Like caution. And owls.
*
I let the iridium box slip through my fingers and it grazed the yeti’s left elbow as it went down, then bounced with a hollow boom off the lip of the wall, clattered into a thicket.
“Disappointed?” asked MeMeMeMeMe.
“Yes,” I admitted sourly, “for it wasn’t even a proper non-sequitur. At first it seemed not to follow from anything that had gone before, then the balloonist turned up and the illusion was exposed. I don’t suppose I’ll ever get a refund. What an idiot!”
“No you’re not. You’re mildly clever.”
“I was referring to Tommy Tindertub. He’s the cretin! He’ll never win an award for good business ethics if he keeps behaving like that. I parted with cash for plain recursion.”
“Maybe it’s not nearly as bad as that.”
“Meaning what, Mr U?”
“Told you before not to call me that. Anyway. Perhaps it really was a genuine non-sequitur. Maybe Tommy’s intrusion into it was just a sort of copyright notice or trademark symbol. It’s his non-sequitur, after all, and we must protect our memes.”
“Our what?” I spluttered angrily.
“Memes, Mr Heckoid. Mental genes. Ideas passed from mind to mind like buttons among the coatless.”
“Oh those. I thought you said ‘mimes’.”
“I assure you I didn’t. I don’t believe in protecting mimes. Not at all. I dislike street theatre intensely. I even advocate smiting those pavement thespians with bunched fists!”
And so I was reassured. Almost. Not quite.
I said, “Consider the pun on the word ‘prudence’. That also relates the tale to what occurred earlier.”
“Could be coincidence. Give it the benefit of the doubt.”
“Expected to grant another benefit of the doubt, am I? Enough doubts on benefit already. We need to break their dependence on benefit, smash the benefit culture!” I roared.
“Here, here!” he replied with a nod.
“You concur?” I squinted.
“No, I was merely indicating that here is a good place for us to climb down from the wall safely.”
And it was. So we did. Slowly, awkwardly. At the bottom a wild dog locked hungry and unreasoning jaws onto the base of MeMeMeMeMe’s right stilt but was kicked off instantly. I watched it soar in a high arc and lap sunshine with its tongue.
“Do yeti hairs really levitate?” I asked.
“They contain natural hydrogen peroxide, which is why they’re so pale blond in colour. In the distant past the peroxide ran out. Now each hair is a sealed tube filled with gas.”
“What’s your favourite musical instrument?”
“The honest lyre,” he said.
“Have you ever stolen a cheese through an open window of a house by spearing it on the end of a stilt?”
He nodded without shame. “Yes I have.”
“What flavour of cheese?”
“Stilton. After the impalement…”
“If a canoe takes twelve times as long as a book to float down a river of ink, how much longer than a worried frown does it take a broad smile to float down a river of tears?”
“I really don’t care, Mr Heckoid.”
“The reason I ask these questions is because I want to get to know you much better. It’s possible that a sincere friendship might evolve from our unhygienic physical proximity.”
“I doubt it. Will you be quiet please?”
A lesser man would have smarted at such a rebuke but I merely sagged into a bottomless depression. Yet I didn’t drop my gaze. Then I caught the glint of something remarkable in the distance. I shielded my eyes with my hands and blinked. Yes, it was there, without a doubt, a pyramid! It had to be the non-sequitur store. I glimpsed it for a moment between the waving branches of a willow and though it was lost to sight again, at least I had a definite direction to aim for. MeMeMeMeMe was too far beneath to have spotted it, so I said casually:
“Turn about ten degrees to the south west.”
“For any particular reason?”
“You’ll learn soon enough. There are roses and a patch of convolvulus to get through, then a forest of mutant daises and buttercups. Then you’ll have to pass a dandy lion, a lion dressed in antique clothes. I bet Tommy Tindertub sold them to it!”
“He’s quite the vertical entrepreneur!”
“Politely put. Indeed.”
We waded into a tangle of rose bushes, scattering petals in our wake, filling the air with intoxicating perfume. I felt drunk. Then I realised that MeMeMeMeMe had accidentally trodden on a whisky still, forgotten and illegal, from way back. That’s why the scent was so heady. Nothing to do with overrated roses, but everything to do with alcohol. I caught a
second glimpse of the pyramid, bigger now, before we reached the convolvulus. We were on the brink of cheating a nightmare, an achievement that’s only a daydream for most people.
The other obstacles in our path turned out to be minor annoyances and no match for an adult yeti. We suddenly broke out into a clearing. Across a smooth plain stood the pyramid. It was surrounded by smaller buildings and seemed part of a lost city.
MeMeMeMeMe needed no spare urging to accelerate toward it and he allowed the wind to comb his hair into the style of a comet as he hastened over the level ground with great galumphing strides that struck xylophone notes from the parched earth.
But something wasn’t quite right.
Having said that, nothing’s ever quite right, so the fact that something wasn’t quite right now was normal enough. Then I relaxed. But maybe I relaxed too much. Bad omen.
In yeti culture, bad omens are lucky.
But I was Albert Guppy Heckoid, a kind of man. Not a yeti, not yet or ever. Not even a kind man.
Which made the situation trickier.
By this time we had reached the base of the gigantic pyramid and were bounding up the steps eight at a time. Then I knew what the problem was. Steps. Do pyramids have steps? The Egyptian sort certainly don’t, but the Mexican type do. We were ascending the wrong sacred edifice! The non-sequitur store must be elsewhere. This was Mayan or Aztec territory and consequently I was utterly afraid. Irreversible sacrifice of newcomers was too significant a component of the worldview of those chaps for my taste and I wanted to be elsewhere.
But MeMeMeMeMe was already at the top.
And I was there with him!
He lowered me to the ground against my will and I shivered anxiously while he regained his monstrous breath. He soon had it back. We looked around and listened. A faint rasping came from behind the altar. Peering over it, the yeti beckoned me to look. Gingerly I complied and saw a low feathered couch with a nude figure lying on it, a priest racked with fevers and slick with sweats. He looked familiar, mostly because he was, partly because he was holding in his weak grip a mirror angled towards me with my own pale face framed in it.
