The Tides of Avarice

by John Dahlgren

  “But it’s suited you well, hasn’t it, Hairbell? You and all the Hairbells before you, whatever their names. It’s suited the preachers like your pathetic crony, Spurge, to keep the lemmings imprisoned in Foxglove as your near-slaves as surely as if there were iron bars around the town stretching from the ground to the sky. Then, every few years you’ve culled every lemming who’s shown the slightest signs of initiative by sending them on the Great Exodus. Not content with having got rid of me, you were planning to send my only son to the same watery grave. Great Exodus, huh?” Jasper spat on to the grass between them. “Great Suicide Leap, more like!”

  Hairbell fluttered his paws. When the Mayor spoke, Sylvester could tell the words were addressed less to Jasper than to the crowd of lemmings behind, some of whom were beginning to rumble angrily.

  “This is all delusion, Jasper, delusion, conspiracy and slander. Or maybe just a misunderstanding.” The Mayor chuckled a ghastly, artificial chuckle. “Yes, that’s it. Just a misunderstanding. Come, come, Jasper” – he moved as if to put an arm around the other lemming’s shoulders – “surely we can talk this over, two old troupers like us.”

  Jasper dodged away. “And you’ve been making up to my wife!”

  “Your widow, dear fellow, your widow. At least, that what everyone thought she was. She thought she was your widow too, which makes it all the more remarkable that she’s consistently rejected my adv—dear me, what was I talking about. I can hardly get my words in order on this happy, happy day, when one, two, three, four of our citizens have returned to us. That’s Daphne Pickleberry back there and young Viola. I’m so charmed to see—”

  “Another who’s suffered your unwelcome advances,” said Sylvester darkly. “What is it about the Lemmington clan’s women, Hairbell. It seems you can hardly keep your paws off them and you don’t even try.”

  Hairbell glanced at Viola and the expression on her face told him not to try to lie his way out of Sylvester’s accusation.

  Jasper turned to Sylvester with a mirthless laugh. “So we both have our arguments with this slimeball, don’t we? But I’m older than you are, son, so I claim precedence. Give me that sword of yours.”

  Wordlessly, Sylvester passed the cutlass to his father.

  “Listen, all of you!” shouted Jasper to the mob of lemmings beyond Hairbell, Spurge and the silent drummers. “You’ve been duped! Generations of Foxglove’s lemmings have been duped. Betrayed! Tricked! Fooled! Lied to! Slaughtered by this power-crazed tyrant and his father and grandfather before him, and by their fathers and grandfathers.”

  The sporadic rumbling among the lemmings increased in volume.

  “Many years ago, someone invented a lie in order to terrify the lemmings of Foxglove into obeying his orders. Then a willing collaborator set up a temple where he told your ancestors there was a great spirit called Lhaeminguas who would visit his wrath on Foxglove unless everyone did what the spirits – which meant the high priest, because there were no spirits and never have been – unless everyone did what the high priest told them to do, which by the strangest of coincidences was what the mayor was also telling them to do.

  “The mayors and high priests of Foxglove have been playing that same trick on the good folk of Foxglove ever since, living on the fat of the land because everyone believes the spirits want the world to be that way.

  “But it’s not that way.

  “The world’s full of adventure and discovery and excitement, things that have been lost from Foxglove for far too long. Just like I said, the whole world’s a land of destiny, if we want it to be.”

  “Blasphemy!” roared High Priest Spurge, finding his voice at last. He held out a straight arm, a long claw extended from it to point at Jasper. “Blasphemy, I say! The great spirit Lhaeminguas has heard your blasphemous thoughts, Jasper Lemmington, and punished you by driving you insane, for surely, only a madman would utter the lies and calumnies you have just uttered.”

  Jasper laughed in the High Priest’s face. “That’s the genius of your hoax, isn’t it? If anyone penetrates the lie, you tell the rest he’s insane or treasonous or working to undermine the good of Foxglove. Or if someone just has doubts you tell him the great spirit Lhaeminguas will visit devastation upon him for the crime of not believing strongly enough.”

  Hairbell clearly didn’t like the way the argument with Spurge was going. He decided to try a different tack.

  “Good citizens of Foxglove! None of us could ever forget the day, not so long ago, when a vicious pack of monsters, led by that cutthroat scoundrel of a fox over there, did their best to destroy the center of our town entirely.”

  Sylvester could see the mayor had succeeded in snatching back the initiative from Jasper. Quite a few of the lemmings were regarding Hairbell with something like respect on their faces.

  “It was a Lemmington who brought the pirates into our midst the first time, and now look what’s happened. Lemmingtons have brought the filthy monsters back again, intent on wreaking yet more havoc!”

  It was a difficult charge to deflect.

  Jasper didn’t even try.

  “More smoke and mirrors from this puffed-up jackanapes! The next thing he’ll be telling you is that Lhaeminguas brought the pirates down upon Foxglove as punishment for everybody’s laziness and moral laxity.”

  “I was just getting to that part!” said Hairbell crossly.

  “Well, it’s all baloney. I’ve seen more of the world than perhaps any lemming before me, and I can tell you there’s no such thing as the great spirit Lhaeminguas. He doesn’t exist. He never has and he never will. Spirits are just inventions by people, people who want to use the threat of the invisible to make others obey their will.”

  “Ahem,” said Rustbane, who’d sauntered up while Jasper was speaking. He towered over the assembled lemmings. Many fell back from the touch of his shadow. Pimplebrains was still reclining some distance away by the edge of the cliff.

  “Yes,” said Jasper, looking up, clearly quite unintimidated by the much larger creature.

  “Not all spirits.”

  “You know of a real one?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who?”

  “The triple-breasted goddess. There ain’t a pirate in the world doesn’t offer worship to the triple-breasted goddess.”

  “And why’s that, do you think?” Jasper’s voice was like a polished needle.

  Rustbane rubbed his chin. “I should think probably,” he said, “it’s because we want to.”

  “So do you actually believe in her?”

  “Well, yes and no.”

  “Mostly yes or mostly no?”

  “Both, really.”

  Despite himself, Sylvester was beginning to snicker. “Don’t follow the line, Dad. Rustbane’ll have you jawing here all day and getting precisely nowhere, if you let him.”

  Hairbell jumped at what he thought was an opening.

  “So, you pirates believe in the spirit world too, do you?” he said, rubbing his forepaws and gazing at Rustbane with an awful parody of admiration.

  “Like I said to my good friend Jasper, it’s a matter of yes and no.”

  “This, er, this supernumerarily privileged goddess of yours, though, she—you definitely think she’s a—”

  “There’s only one way to find out, Mayor Hairbell,” said the gray fox with deceptive gentleness.

  “There is?”

  “By going to the spirit world and finding out for yourself.” To clarify his meaning, the fox tapped his pistol to his nose. “I could help you with that, if you’d like.”

  Jasper held up his paw. “That’s my task,” he said. “My pleasure,” he amended.

  “Don’t, Dad!”

  “What?”

  “He’s unarmed. If you cut down someone who’s defenseless it’ll be the same as murder. You’ll be no better than the sli
meball.”

  “Then give him a sword, someone!”

  “No! Killing him’s not the way!”

  “Then what would you suggest?”

  “Exile?”

  Hairbell, his gaze darting back and forth between father and son, began to snigger. “Exile? And how do a pawful of you propose to send me into exile when the whole population of Foxglove, loyal as they are to their mayor and respectful of the great spirit Lhaeminguas” – he waved an imperious paw behind him at the now-silent ranks of lemmings – “wish exactly the contrary?”

  “What makes you think they’re so loyal?” said Jasper.

  “I know my people,” said Hairbell with a complacent smile.

  “Why not ask them?”

  “Huh?”

  “We’ll ask them.”

  “We will?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ask them,” said Hairbell heavily, “if they’d rather take the word of a renegade and blasphemer over that of the mayor who’s served their interests faithfully and well for all these years?”

  “That’s about the sum of it, yes.”

  “If you really think that—”

  “I do.”

  Jasper raised his arms over his head, appealing to the crowd of lemmings. “How many people here think we deserve to decide our lives ourselves? How many of you are tired of being told what to do and what to believe in? How many of you are tired of being afraid, of living a life dominated by fear of what Lhaeminguas might do to you if you don’t obey the every last whim of Hairbell and Spurge here?”

  There was an appalled silence. Sylvester was convinced his father had alienated all the Foxglove lemmings. Glancing over his shoulder, Sylvester told himself the cliff edge wasn’t really so very far away, and the chances of surviving a leap over it were really quite good, all things considered. And the longboat was still down there, wasn’t it?

  “Step forward,” cried Jasper, “step forward anyone who’d like to lift the yoke of tyranny from their shoulders.”

  Most of the Foxglovians stared at the ground, clearly ashamed to meet Jasper’s gaze. A few stared at the sky instead. A hushed silence hung over the gathering. The only sound was the distant splashing of the breakers at the foot of the Mighty Enormous Cliff, the honking of a high-flying gull and the shuffling of countless uneasy paws on the grass.

  Hairbell grinned triumphantly at Jasper.

  “So much for your little uprising, eh, Lemmington? The spirit Lhaeminguas must be weeping over your treachery and betrayal. It’s in obedience to the will of the spirit that, far from being exiled myself, I must shoulder the unpleasant duty of expelling you and all your equally disgusting companions from the happy home of Foxglove, where—”

  There was a small, barely audible stir among the crowd.

  “Bullrich!” said Sylvester.

  Viola’s little brother looked up at him. “Yeah?”

  “What’re you doing?”

  “I’m sayin’ we should get rid of Fatty Hairbell, is what I’m doin’.”

  “Get back in line, you noxious little brat!” shouted Hairbell.

  “Nope,” said Bullrich. He shut his eyes. Despite the defiance of his tone, he was trembling. Clearly, it had taken him all of his courage and more to push to the front of the crowd and defy the Mayor. Now he was expecting to die.

  “You’d send a child like this over the cliff, would you?” said Sylvester, his anger rising.

  “He’s young to go seeking the Land of Destiny,” replied Hairbell, obviously fighting hard to keep any note of desperation out of his voice, “but he’s a plucky little fellow and I thought he deserved the chance to—”

  There was a smaaaccck that seemed to make the clouds shudder in their course across the sky.

  Mayor Hairbell flew in one direction. His teeth flew on independent trajectories in most of the others. The Mayor landed on his back several yards from where he’d been standing.

  “So you’d send my baby son off on your suicide trip wouldjer, Hairbell?” shouted Mrs. Pickleberry dusting off her hands.

  “Mom!” cried Bullrich, throwing himself at her. She wrapped her free arm around him, pulling him close to her ample belly.

  Surprisingly, the Mayor was still alive. Hairbell raised a hideously bloodied face from the grass and stared venomously at Mrs. Pickleberry and the others.

  “Seize these criminals!” shouted High Priest Spurge. “Seize these ruffians who’d assault our beloved Mayor.”

  No one moved to obey the priest.

  But people did begin to move.

  First one lemming stepped deliberately forward, then another.

  “We’re tired of you, Spurge,” said someone. It was Mr. Snowbanks the innkeeper, Sylvester noticed with surprise. He’d never thought of Mr. Snowbanks as a rebel of any sort. “Tired of you and your spirit buddy, Lhaeminguas. Most of all we’re tired of Hairbell over there. Get out of here. Get out of Foxglove and never come back.”

  “Don’t you realize the great spirit Lhaeminguas will curse you all for this?”

  “I don’t believe in the great spirit Lhaeminguas. I haven’t for years.” The innkeeper wrapped his paws across his stomach and stared at Spurge. “But I was too polite to say, like.”

  “Heretic!”

  “We’re tired of being afraid,” said Mr. Snowbanks. “Tired of being frightened by your bogeyman. Life’s too short as it is without having to live it in constant fear and trembling of what the darkness holds. Jasper Lemmington’s right. The Land of Destiny’s wherever we choose to find it, not where you tell us it is. You may think I’m just a fat, stupid lemming, and who knows you may be right, but I’m not so stupid that I can’t realize my own ideas are mine, and precious beyond measure for just that reason. You’ve tried to turn us lemmings into a mindless herd and you’ve damned near succeeded, but inside us all there’s a unique individual. I can’t speak for any of those other unique individuals, but I do know what I believe myself. I don’t care if there is a great spirit Lhaeminguas, and I don’t care if he curses me right down dead here where I stand for wanting my freedom, because I can’t think of any worse curse than not having my freedom.”

  “Listen to this blasphemy,” hissed High Priest Spurge to the crowd. “Are you going to let Snowbanks utter these words and live?”

  “Snowbanks is right!” yelled someone at the back.

  “We’ve had enough of that rotten priest!”

  “And the mayor!”

  “String ’em up!”

  Spurge sneered. “Have you all lost your minds?”

  “Yes,” said Doctor Nettletree, stepping toward him, “and it’s wonderful.”

  “Even you?”

  “Me most of all,” replied the doctor. “I see people at their most vulnerable and sometimes the most I can do is make it as easy as possible for them as their lives ebb away. I’ve never noticed the slightest sign of any of your spirits. All there are is life and death and, with luck, the minimum of suffering in between.”

  “Traitor!”

  “No, Spurge, you’re the traitor. You’re the one who’s been trying to enslave the good people of Foxglove. Now we’ve called you on it, you and Hairbell, and it’s time for you both to go.”

  Jasper began to giggle. “I’ve had the most splendid idea,” he said. “Why don’t we give Spurge and Hairbell the opportunity to test the strength of their own faith?”

  “You mean—” began Rustbane, also chuckling.

  “Yes,” said Jasper. “A Great Exodus just for two.”

  Sylvester was horrified for a moment, then realized his father’s proposal wasn’t nearly as heartless as it seemed. The longboat must surely still be somewhere close to the bottom of the Mighty Enormous Cliff, so if Hairbell and Spurge survived the fall they should be able to reach it and row away. Row away to where wasn’t a matte
r Sylvester wished to contemplate at the moment.

  “I’m sure they’ll be only too glad to, Dad,” he said loudly. “Shall we give them a bit of help?”

  “No!” shrieked Spurge, trying to find an escape route through the throng of angry lemmings. “Don’t do that.”

  “Your faith too weak?” said Rustbane in an ugly voice.

  “Have mercy!” the priest wailed.

  “How many hundreds of lemmings did you send to their deaths over the years?” said Mr. Snowbanks, prodding Spurge in the chest with his clenched paw. “Did you have mercy on any of them, you old fraud?”

  “I, I—”

  Already half a dozen younger and fitter lemmings had picked up Mayor Hairbell from the turf and were bearing him toward the cliff edge. The mayor seemed too groggy from Mrs. Pickleberry’s cruel blow to protest, let alone put up a fight.

  “I can’t swim,” wept Spurge.

  “Did that ever stop you from sending anyone else over the cliff?” demanded Doctor Nettletree. The physician held the priest’s gaze for a long moment before speaking again. “No, I thought not. I think you’ve just booked yourself a passage to your very own Land of Destiny, Spurge.”

  “Let me,” said Rustbane, reaching forward.

  The gray fox picked up the high priest as if Spurge were hardly more than a feather. Almost at once, the lemming began to struggle, but the fox was easily able to wrap his claws around Spurge, imprisoning the priest as if in a cage.