by neetha Napew
“Right, mate,” said Mudge energetically, “we can get to all that later, wot? Right now we need to save our breath for puttin’ as many trees between ourselves and that lot as we can.”
“Sure, but I....”
“Sure but you can talk about it later, when we ‘ave a chance to sit down an’ chat without worryin’ about no pursuit, right?”
Jon-Tom caught the otter’s drift and shut up. There was no harm in acceding to his friend’s unspoken request for silence. He doubted Weegee needed any otherworldly philosophical help anyway.
XIV
The ogres did not follow. Jon-Tom suspected they wouldn’t. They were too busy sorting out their own lives to worry about their former captives.
Mudge should have been cheered by their easy escape. Instead, the otter tramped along enveloped in melancholy, his expression dour. When he replied to questions it was in monosyllables. Finally Jon-Tom asked him if anything was wrong.
“O” course somethin’s wrong, mate. I’m tired. Tired o’ stinkin’ jungle, tired o’ runnin’, tired o’ followin’ you ‘alfway around the world every time I think life’s settled back to somethin’ like normal. An* there’s somethin’ else, too.” By way of illustration be began scratching under his left arm, working his way around to his back.
“Ever since we left Chejiji I’ve been itchin’. Last few days ‘tis gotten considerable worse. I must’ve picked up some kind o’ rash. Worst place is in the middle o’ me back, but I can’t reach back there.”
“You should’ve said something, love.” Weegee halted and began peeling off his vest. “Let me have a look.”
They took a standing break while she inspected Mudge’s back and shoulders.
“Well, wot is it?” he asked when she didn’t comment. When she finally did speak it wasn’t to him.
“Jon-Tom, I think you’d better come have a look at this.”
He did so, and was too shocked by what he saw to say anything.
All the hair on the otter’s back had fallen out. A glance beneath the arm where he’d just been scratching showed that the fur there was likewise coming out. Weegee brushed her paw across the back of his leg and came away with a whole handful of fur.
“Wot’s the matter with you two? Wot’s wrong?”
“I’m afraid it’s more than just a rash, Mudge.”
“Wot do you mean, more than a rash? ‘Ave I got leprosy or somethin’?”
“No—not exactly,” Weegee murmured.
That brought Mudge around sharply. “Wot do you mean, ‘not exactly’? Will somebody kindly tell me wot’s wrong? Tis just a damn itch. See?” He rubbed his right forearm. When he brought his paw back he’d left behind a bare strip of skin. “Oh me haunches an’ little sisters.” Horrified, he stared up at Jon-Tom. “You got to stop it, mate.” A patch of fur fell from his forehead. “Do somethin’, spellsing it awaaaay.” He was hopping about frantically, the fur fairly flying off him.
“I’ll try, Mudge.” He whipped the suar around and sang the most appropriate songs he could think of, ending with a rousing chorus of the title tune froni the musical, Hair. All to no avail. Mudge’s alopecia continued to worsen. When the exhausted otter finally ran down several minutes later there wasn’t a tuft of fur on his denuded form.
Cautious regarded him with his usual phlegmatic state. “Never seen a bald otter before. Ain’t pretty.”
“Wot am I goin’ to doooo!”
“Stop moaning, for one thing,” Jon-Tom chided him.
“I might as well be dead.”
“And don’t talk like that.”
Weegee was leaning on Mudge, trying to comfort him. Now she pulled away slightly to peer at his spine. “Wait a minute. I think it’s starting to grow back already.”
“Don’t tease me, luv. I know I’m doomed to wander the world like this, an outcast, furless and naked like some mutated ‘uman.”
“No, really.” There was genuine excitement in her voice. “Look here.” She raised his left arm to his face. Jon-Tom looked, too. Sure enough, little nubs of fur were sprouting through the skin. They could see them growing.
Mudge all but leaped into the air with relief. “Comin’ back she is! Wot a relief. I thought ‘twas all over for poor Mudge. Wouldn’t ‘ave been able to show me face in any o’ me old “aunts. Come on, mates, let’s not ‘ang around ‘ere. I might get reinfected.”
By late that night half-inch long fur, dark brown and glossy, covered the otter’s entire body. By morning it had grown back to its normal length. Each bristle was unusually thick, but the color and feel were otherwise correct and Mudge could have cared less about the one unnoticeable variation. He looked like himself again.
Toward the end of the day he no longer did.
“When do you suppose this’ll stop growin’?” He was staring down at himself and muttering.
“Don’t worry about it.” Weegee gave him a reassuring caress. “If it gets any longer we can always give you a trim.”
Trouble was, it continued to grow and short of swords they had nothing to trim it with. So it continued to lengthen, growing at the same steady extraordinary speed, until it was a foot long. This slowed their progress since Mudge had a tendency to step on and trip over the fur growing from his feet. He’d long since had to removed his boots. Finally it was decided to resort to the use of a short sword, but trimming it back only accelerated the rate of regrowth.
By the morning of the next day the quartet included three anxious travelers and a shambling ball of fuzz. Mudge was reduced to holding the fur away from his eyes in order to see.
“You look like the sheepdog that ate Seattle.”
“This is gettin’ bloody absurd, mate. Pretty soon I won’t be able to walk.”
“Then we roll you into Strelakat Mews.” Cautious ducked beneath a branch. “I hope among their master craftsfolk there be a master barber.”
“And I’ve about had it with the clever comments!” the otter bawled angrily. He would have taken a swing at the raccoon except that he could barely move his arms.
By afternoon a light rain was falling and, perhaps by coincidence, so was the fur. It came out in four-foot long strands. When the last hank lay upon the ground there stretched out behind them a trail of fur sufficient to fill a couple of goodsized mattresses. Mudge was bare-ass bald again.
Yet new bristles were already starting to appear on his back. By nightfall his coat had grown back to normal.
“Maybe we’ll wake up in the mornin’ an’ I’ll be meself again,” he said hopefully as he wrapped himself in a light bedroll.
“I’m sure you will.” Weegee patted him soothingly. “It’s been a terrible couple of days for you but I bet the infection’s run its course. You’ve lost it all, had it come back in multiples, lost that and regained it again. Surely nothing else can happen.” She lay down next to him.
The main problem with jungle trekking, Jon-Tom reflected, was that you sweated all the time. Not that it mattered to anyone but him, since odor was an accepted bodily condition in this world. But he wasn’t used to smelling as strongly as Mudge, say, and he was finding it increasingly difficult to ignore his own intensifying aroma.
For a change he was the first one up. The camp was silent. Weegee slept comfortably on her side and Cautious lay on his belly not far away. But where was Mudge? Had the otter wandered off in a fit of depression and perhaps fallen into one? The cycle of too much fur-none at all had stressed his stubby companion considerably. A quick inspection of the camp revealed no sign of the otter.
“Weegee.” He shook her firmly. “Wake up, Weegee.”
She sat up fast. Otters do not awaken gradually. “What’s wrong, Jon-Tom?”
“Mudge has disappeared.”
She was on her feet fast and he moved to wake Cautious.
“Ain’t here.” The raccoon turned a slow circle. “Wonder what happened to him, you bet.”
“He’s always hungry,” said a worried Weegee. “Maybe he’s just gone b
erry hunting or something. Let’s shout his name simultaneously and see what happens.”
“Right.” Jon-Tom cupped his hands to his mouth. “All together now: one, two, three....”“MUDGE!”
This provoked an immediate response, but not from a distant section of forest. “Will you lot kindly shut up so a body can finish ‘is bleedin’ sleep?”
The voice seemed to come from close by, but though they searched carefully there was no sign of its source.
“Mudge? Mudge, where are you?” Weegee looked up at Jon-Tom. “Has he gone invisible?”
“No, I ain’t gone invisible,” the otter groused. “You’ve all gone blind is wot.”
Jon-Tom nodded to his left. “I think he’s sleeping under that flower bed over there.” Sure enough, when he walked over and parted the blossoms a pair of angry brown eyes glared back at him, blinking sleepily.
“Gone deaf, too. I said I were tryin’ to catch up on me sleep, mate. Do I boot you out o’ bed when you’re sleepin’ late?”
Jon-Tom took a deep breath as he stepped back. “I think you’d better take a good look at yourself, Mudge.”
“Cor, wot is it this time?” The flower bed sat up slowly. “No fur? Too much fur?” He glanced downward and his voice became an outraged squeak. “Oh me god, now wot’s ‘appened to me?”
What had happened was as obvious as it was unprecedented. During the night Mudge’s fur had returned to its normal length and consistency but with one notable exception. The slight thickening they had noticed at the tip of each bristle had blossomed into—well, into blossoms. Each bristle was tipped with a brightly hued flower. Other than being a bit thicker and tougher than most, the petals appeared perfectly flower-like.
Weegee found more than a dozen different types. “Daisies, bluebells, yellowlips, murcockles, redbells, twoclovers— why Mudge, you’re beautiful. And you smell nice, too.”
“I don’t want to be beautiful! I don’t want to smell nice!” The apoplectic otter was dancing in an angry circle and waving his arms at the injustice of it all. Petals flew off him as he flailed at the air. He looked like a piece of a Rose Parade float making a break for freedom. Eventually he ran out of steam and settled down in a disconsolate lump—a very pretty lump, Jon-Tom mused.
“Woe is me. Wot’s to become o’ poor Mudge?”
“Take it easy.” Jon-Tom put an arm around a flowered shoulder. A happy bee buzzed busily atop one ear. “I’m sure this conditon will pass quickly just like all the others. And to think you’re always calling me a blooming idiot.”
Mudge let out a shriek and charged his friend, but Jon-Tom had anticipated the attack and dodged out of the way. Normally Mudge would have run him down, but he was so encumbered by his floral fur that Jon-Tom was able to elude him.
“Vicious,” he mumbled. “Vicious an’ evil an’ sarcastic, you grinnin’ ape.” He looked down at himself, spreading his arms. “Positively ‘umiliatin’.”
“Look at it this way,” Jon-Tom told him from a safe distance, “if we have to hide from any pursuers you’re already perfectly camouflaged.”
“Jokes. ‘Ere I’m sufferin’ terrible an” me best friend ‘as to make jokes.”
Jon-Tom put his chin in hand and studied the otter with exaggerated seriousness. “I don’t know whether we should have you mowed or fertilized.”
Even Weegee was not immune. “Don’t worry, dearest. I’ll make sure to water you twice a week.”
Mudge sat down on flowery hindquarters. “I ‘ate the both o’ you. Individually an’ with malice aforethought. Also afterthought.”
“Now Mudgey....” Weegee moved to caress him but he pulled away.
“Don’t you touch me.” He didn’t retreat a second time, however.
She began plucking petals from one of his blooms. “He loves me, he loves me not.”
By the time she’d finished plucking him there wasn’t a petal left on his back. Nor did the flowers rebloom. The bristles that moments earlier had doubled as stems stayed bare.
“See, Mudge? Under the flowers your fur is normal.” Together they began removing the rest of the blossoms.
There was a lot of hair and a lot of petals and plucking kept them busy the rest of the way to Strelakat Mews. By the time they were approaching the outskirts of the town Mudge looked and felt like his old self again. The mysterious (if colorful) disease had run its course. A good thing, too, since Mudge and Weegee were worn out from three days of continuous plucking.
There was no road sign, no warning. They didn’t so much march into Strelakat Mews as stumble into it.
Jon-Tom had been too preoccupied with other matters to envision the town in his mind, so he wasn’t prepared for the enchanting reality. Neither were his companions. It cast an immediate spell over all of them. All the dangers and travails of the long journey were behind now. They could relax, take it easy, and let themselves succumb to the charm of this unique community carved out of the middle of the Mews.
At the edge of the town the jungle had been pruned rather than merely cleared away. Those trees and bushes which put forth large flowers had been left intact to lend their color and fragrance to the periphery. No one pointed this out to Mudge as he was still somewhat sensitive where the matter of blossoms was concerned. Any mention of flowers tended to tilt him to the homicidal.
A single cobblestone street wound its way through town, its very existence as astonishing as the precision with which the stones had been set. Jon-Tom could only try to imagine where the townsfolk had quarried perfect cobblestones in the middle of the jungle.
The first shop they passed was a bakery, from which such wonderful smells issued that even the grumpy Mudge began to salivate. As was true of every establishment they passed, the exterior reflected the inhabitant’s occupation. The roofing shingles resembled slabs of chocolate. Surely the window panes were fashioned of spun sugar, the doors and paneling of gingerbead, and the lintels of strudel. Ropes of red licorice bound candy logs together. Yet all was illusion, as Mudge discovered when he tried to steal a quick lick of spongecake fence only to discover it was made of wood and not flour.
A master sculptor’s residence was hewn from white marble which had been buffed to such a high polish not even a solitary raindrop could cling to it. Woodworkers’ homes were miracles of elaborate carving, baroque with curlicues and reliefs. Seamless joints were covered with fruitwood veneers. Such work was normally reserved for the fashioning of fine furniture.
A painter’s house was a landscape of mountains and clouds set down amidst green jungle. A rainbow seemed to move across the face of the building.
“Magic,” said Cautious.
“Not magic. Superior artistry. Superior skill and craftsmanship.”
They passed a mason’s house, an infinity of tiny colored stones set in an almost invisible matrix. A furniture maker’s establishment resembled a giant overstuffed settee surmounted by a dining room table. But nowhere did they see a storefront or home that suggested its owner was a maker of musical instruments.
They finally had to stop outside the house of a master weaver. Jon-Tom rang the bell set in the door of woven reeds, a rectangle of brown against walls of dyed wool, alpaca and qiviot. The weaver was a four-foot-tall paca, built like a pear and clad in a simple tunic. She rested against the door jamb while she pondered the stranger’s story.
“I don’t know that you should bother Couvier Coulb,” she said at last.
Jon-Tom relaxed slightly. At least they’d come to the right place. He said as much to the weaver.
“Oh, this is the right place, yes.” She looked into his eyes, studied his face. “You’ve come a long way. And you say you are a spellsinger?”
Jon-Tom slid the sack containing the remnants of his duar off his shoulder and exhibited the contents. “Yes. My mentor, the wizard Clothahump, said that in all the world only Couvier Coulb might have the skill necessary to repair my duar.”
“A magical device.” She eyed it curiously. “Not ma
ny of us here deal with magic, though visitors think otherwise. Shomat the baker now, he can make decorations dance atop his cakes and spin spun sugar webbing spiders mistake for their own. Couvier Coulb knows also a trick or two.” She sighed, apparently arriving at a conclusion to some unspoken internal argument. “I can show you where he lives.” She stepped out onto the cotton porch and pointed.
“You go to the end of the main street. A trail turns to the left. Don’t take that one. Take the one after it. The house you want lies at its end a short walk from town, back in the trees beside a waterfall. You can’t mistake it for anyone else’s place.
“Be quiet in your approach. If there is no response when you knock on the door, please leave as silently as you came.”
Jon-Tom was carefully repacking the pieces of his duar. “Don’t worry. I wouldn’t be here unless it was an emergency.”
“You do not understand. You see, I fear you may have come too late. Couvier Coulb is dying.”
XV
Mudge kicked pebbles from his path as they made their way down the street. “Great, just great. We slog ‘alfway across the world to get your bleedin’ instrument fixed an’ the only bloke wot can maybe do it up an’ croaks on us.”
“We don’t know that. He isn’t dead yet.” Jon-Tom shifted his pack higher on his back. “The weaver said he was dying, not that he was deceased.”
“Dyin’, dead, wot’s the difference. You think ‘e’ll be in any kind o’ shape to work? The inconsiderate schmucko could’ve waited a couple of weeks till we’d finished our business before gettin’ on with ‘is.”
“I’m sure if he’d known we were coming he would have postponed his fatal illness just to accommodate us.”
“Precisely me point, mate.”
Jon-Tom looked away. Just when he thought the otter might be turning into a halfway decent person he’d up and say something like that. Though by the standards of this world his behavior was hardly shocking.
They found the second trail and turned into the trees. It was a short hike to the house of Couvier Coulb. They were able to hear it before they could see it because the house itself reflected the mood of its master. This morning it was playing a funeral dirge, which was hardly encouraging. The melancholy music permeated the air, the earth, their very bones, filling them with sadness.
