The Elfin Ship

by James P. Blaylock

  Jonathan was filled with a sense of adventure though. By the time the meeting wound down he was just a bit puffed up with pride and when it was finally his turn to speak, he came near close to strutting up to the front of the hall. Amid a great deal of applause, he held one hand aloft and began a very pretty speech that, remarkable enough, said exactly what the people of Twombly Town wanted to hear – that theories about Willowood Station were all fine, but it was action, not theories, that was called for in this situation. Someone, he insisted, must sail south to complete the trading and return before Christmas or else the holidays would be a rather sorry lot. Without honeycakes the traditional Christmas feasts would suffer, and without elfin gifts, the children would be sad. If the feasting were poor and the children were sad, Jonathan said in a stout voice, then the Christmas holidays might as well be Willowood Station all smashed and gone down the river.

  Jonathan’s speech was inspired. The people of Twombly Town were, up until then, uncertain as to whether Jonathan would undertake the voyage or not. What with Gilroy Bastable’s pessimistic account of his conversation with Jonathan the previous night, the outlook had been grim. Their response, therefore, was to shout hurrah and stomp about and lift Jonathan onto their shoulders and carry him up and down Main Street. Ahab looked on the scene in wonder. Even Wurzle and Beezle seemed content in their way. Beezle was happy that he’d had an opportunity to lay out his diagrams and explain them, and Professor Wurzle was happy for other reasons.

  Jonathan spent the rest of the day at market, trading cheeses for cabbages and hams and mushrooms and nets of onions and garlic. His wagon, when he finally towed it home, was as full as when he’d set out. For the return trip Ahab wasn’t allowed to ride on top of the load for fear that he’d squish the produce. Besides, the way home was uphill and Jonathan had a hard enough time of it without having to contend with the dog’s additional weight. The wheels of the wagon got mired in the mud twice so that by the time he lurched up before his porch, Jonathan was as splashed and muddied as Gilroy Bastable had been after his tussle with the storm. But all in all it had been a very good day. His decision to make the journey seemed almost as wise as it had when he made his speech at the Guildhall.

  Supper that night wasn’t as good as it should have been, as Jonathan was preoccupied and his mind wasn’t on what he was doing. His cornmeal muffins burned and tasted like sour charcoal, and the lima beans in his ham-and-bean soup refused to cook, and cracked rather than mushed when he bit into them. About halfway through the evening, Ahab began to walk in his sleep and strode stiff-legged around the room three times, one eye open and one shut, moaning fearfully. Coming on top of the ruined muffins and hardened beans, Ahab’s behavior was a bad omen indeed.

  Jonathan didn’t pretend not to know what was the matter. It was, of course, the journey he’d proposed in such a strutting manner at the Guildhall. As the night became blacker and the wind picked up and whistled through the redwoods in the forest beyond his house, Jonathan developed an even greater liking for his home and fire than usual. The spirit of adventure in him was being wrestled down by the spirit of stay-at-home, and by eight o’clock in the evening he was pacing up and down the room, first planning the trip, then unplanning it. He could already feel the cold night wind off the river and the wet socks that were the curse of raftsmen everywhere. He could imagine his disappointment when his eggs gave out and the fresh meat wasn’t fresh any longer. Unless he stopped to hunt – a sport he wasn’t inclined to – he would exist for the better part of the voyage on oatmeal porridge, jerked beef and hard biscuits. With luck, he would be able to pick wild blackberries on into the first of December, especially in the rainy hemlock forests closer to the sea. But as good as wild blackberries are, it doesn’t take too many days before they aren’t so good anymore. Jonathan’s thoughts were bleak indeed, and the more he paced and thought, the less he wanted to go.

  At one point he had the wild idea of piling all his valuables onto his cart, breaking a lot of windows in his house, and hanging a sign on the door that indicated he’d been robbed and carried away by pirates. The notion sounded very good at first, pirates being greatly talked of about town. He could simply sneak out under the cover of night and head upriver, maybe to Little Beddlington or to the City of the Five Monoliths. He could leave and never return, so as not to have to discuss his reasons with all the people who were so anxious that he risk his head on a fool’s journey downriver. But as he paced and thought, several major gaps became visible in his plan. Pirates, probably, didn’t hang placards about to advertise their affairs, nor did they, he supposed, allow their victims to do so. Besides, if he were to make a journey anyway, what matter if he went north or south, if he traveled by raft on the river or dragged his wagon along the highroad?

  So Jonathan continued to pace, bemoaning his fate and blaming it, a bit unfairly perhaps, on the people of Twombly Town. His destiny which just that afternoon had beckoned like a wood nymph, now winked and leered like a soggy and bedraggled tramp.

  A sharp rap on the window brought him up short. A tap on the window could mean very few things – either trouble of some sort was poking its nose in where it wasn’t wanted, or Dooly, a thick but well-meaning lad, was doing the same. A flurry of giggles from outside the window seemed to indicate Dooly. In truth, Jonathan was partial to the young man who was dim-witted as a pine cone at times but who believed every wonderful and marvelous thing anyone told him, especially if it was an obvious lie. But he wasn’t a bad sort, and he and Ahab seemed to have a mutual understanding. Dooly would talk to Ahab for hours, the dog cocking an eye every now and again and mumbling under his breath.

  Jonathan opened the door, glad for any sort of company. Dooly strode in, shouting and gesturing and coatless even though it was a cold and windy night.

  ‘Hey-ho! Cheeser!’ cried Dooly, his eyes seeming to sail about in their sockets like spiraling leaves in a gust of wind. ‘So it’s hey-ho and away we go, eh!’

  ‘So they say, Dooly. So they say,’ replied Jonathan not nearly as enthusiastically.

  ‘I had a grandfather once,’ said Dooly, pausing as if that were the end of the thought.

  Jonathan waited for a moment, preparing for another of Dooly’s lunatic stories. ‘We all had such things, Dooly. Every man-jack of us had.’

  ‘What I meant to say, sir, if you’ll just pardon my tongue, as it is, sir, is that my grandpa took and sailed south, he did. And he found, sir, a great sort of cabinet, there at the seaside. It was one like you or I might keep our clothes in. And do you know, Cheeser, what was in this here cabinet?’

  ‘No,’ said Jonathan.

  ‘A great fat clown,’ said Dooly, ‘all made up with feathers and paint and diamonds and such and with a tail curled all up like a corkscrew. A magic pig, it was, says I, pretending to be a circus clown.’

  ‘Well that’s marvelous, Dooly. Who was it told you such a story?’

  ‘My ma,’ said Dooly, ‘just afore she told me about the devilfish that swallowed my uncle.’

  ‘Ah. So that’s the case. Perhaps I’ll see such a thing as an enchanted clown-pig. That would lend an air of what-do-you-call-it to the journey.’

  ‘So it would,’ Dooly nearly shouted. ‘Imagine such a thing as that! Imagine such a wonder!’

  Just about then Ahab awoke and lumbered over to welcome Dooly; whereupon the two of them trotted off to the fireside to chat. Jonathan then resumed his pacing. He wanted very much to talk to someone about the journey, but there was only one person around, and he was already talking to the dog. It was a sad state of affairs.

  He tried to buck himself up by thinking about the hero’s welcome he’d get, sailing back into Twombly Town wharf with a raft piled high with honeycakes and candy and elfin gifts for the children; kaleidoscopes with lightning bugs inside and marbles that rolled themselves and glowed like living rainbows when the sun went down, and moon gardens encased in glass balls that sprouted and grew weird castles and caverns and tiny fish that
you needed a special eyeglass to see. How glorious it would be to sail into Twombly Town a week before Christmas with the likes of that on your raft.

  Jonathan almost convinced himself and actually began thinking of the provisions he’d need for the journey. But the more he thought the more tiresome it all seemed. When he began to think about storms and goblins and long river miles, he sank once again into a gloom.

  ‘Cheeser!’ came a voice from near the fire. Jonathan jumped, having forgotten that Dooly was present. ‘Shall we take Ahab along, Mister Cheeseman, when we go a-rafting?’

  ‘I suppose I will,’ replied Jonathan. ‘You, however, aren’t going rafting – at least not with me.’

  ‘Ah!’ cried Dooly. ‘But do you suppose, Cheeser, that one would go a-rafting without such a dog as this?’

  ‘No,’ said Jonathan, ‘I don’t imagine he would.’

  ‘No, sir! He would not. My old grandfather never set out nor put his coat on without a dog such as this. A specimen he called it. Dogs was specimens to him. It was “a fine specimen that” and a “poor specimen this” to Grandpa.’

  ‘Your grandfather was a man who knew his dogs, Dooly; that’s apparent.’

  ‘Bless me!’ Dooly shouted, causing Ahab to leap to his feet and howl. ‘Did he know them? I should say, if you’ll pardon me carrying on. His dog, Old Biscuit, if I remember, was the one as found the treasure near Bleakstone Hollow.’

  ‘Quite a treasure, was it?’

  ‘Quite a treasure!’ Dooly cried like an astounded parrot. ‘Twas a whacking great iron pot, the kind the goblins cook men in for supper. And do you know, Master Bing, what such a thing was full of?’

  ‘I haven’t even a foggy idea.’

  ‘Red diamonds bigger’n a house. Zillions, there were, as made old Wurzle’s emerald look like a green ant.’

  ‘All piled in this goblin pot, were they?’

  ‘Like spring cherries!’

  ‘That must have made your grandfather a rich man.’

  ‘Not a word of it. He come back to the farm to get his wheelbarrow, and by the time he got back up to the hollow, they were gone!’

  ‘No!’ said Jonathan.

  ‘Oh yes, Mister Bing. And there was a powerful lot of stick candy there. Any flavor you want. Grandpa was always one for sweets, so this didn’t bother him. He set in to load up his wheelbarrow, and you know what came up out of the bushes?’

  ‘Uh-uh.’

  Dooly fell silent and peered about the house. Then, in a barely audible whisper, he said, ‘Goblins, fit for dinner and carryin’ big knives and forks and with teeth comin’ out all over, and Grandpa knew what it was – enchantment! And one great goblin with eyes like pinwheels come for Grandpa. He opened his mouth bigger’n that door over there, and do you know what was inside?’

  Jonathan was on the verge of shaking his head when a half dozen sharp knocks on the door caught his attention. Dooly imagined the source of the noise to be the great whirling-eyed goblin with the unspeakable thing in its mouth. He cried out in terror, jumped up, made a dash for the window. Then he turned and leaped through the kitchen and ran out the rear door fearful of demons.

  The visitor turned out to be Gilroy Bastable.

  ‘Jonathan, Jonathan, Jonathan Bing!’ cried old Bastable, hearty as a beef stew.

  ‘Lo there, Gilroy.’

  ‘Here, Jonathan, I have banknotes amounting to a goodly sum and a sheet of paper listing every villager’s share. We decided, if you’ll agree, to work things the same as always. If things go bad, the city makes the notes good. You aren’t responsible, not in the business sense leastways. How’s that?’

  ‘That’s just fine, Gilroy. Couldn’t ask for more.’ In truth, Jonathan was being a bit short with people that night, not because he was mean or annoyed or anything, but because he was down in the dumps.

  The mayor assumed that Jonathan was simply tired after a busy day and so did his best to be cheerful and rally round. He strode back and forth beaming like a satisfied toad. At every third or fourth stride he’d pause and cry, ‘It’s a fine day, a great day, a wonderful day!’ He smiled over his spectacles.

  ‘Do you know,’ asked the mayor, pausing for a moment, ‘that the boys were for storming the hill here and riding you up and down on their shoulders again? And they’d have done it too. But I put the damper on it, Cheeser, because I know you’re not one for that sort of celebratin’.’

  ‘Thank you, Gilroy. You’re quite right.’

  ‘Well, Jonathan. We loaded provisions for you down at wharfside and got hold of the best raft in the parts. I know you have your own, Jonathan, but this one is a sight bigger. It has a new wheel on it that can be cranked by one man and can almost make headway upriver without sail. It’s a wonder, Cheeser – a raft for a prince.

  ‘We managed to lay in a store of beef – some salted and some dried – and barrels of candied fruit, salted vegetables, wheat flour, oats, and dill pickles. There’s a keg of rum and a rack of port and all the pots and pans and cutlery you’ll need. There’s a cabin midway back big enough for an army that will double for a hold. Does all this fill the bill, Jonathan?’

  ‘I should say, Gilroy. Will the cheeses stay dry in a storm?’

  ‘Dry as a bug.’

  ‘And is this raft rigged like my own? Double masts and a square topsail and foresail and oversized jib?’

  ‘All of that, Jonathan. Just like you said.’

  ‘And extra rope – two hundred feet of it – and canvas too.’

  ‘The canvas we’ve got; the rope we’ll add tomorrow.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jonathan, perked up again now that there was work to do.

  ‘Can you sail morning after tomorrow? Wurzle says it would be wise. And of all of us, he probably knows best.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Jonathan hesitated. ‘That’s sort of soon.’

  ‘The farther into fall, Cheeser, the more chance of storms and high water. You’ll have plenty of help tomorrow and the work’s half done already. Shall we say morning after tomorrow, then?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jonathan, ‘I suppose we shall.’

  3

  A Sandbar South of Twombly Town

  The river lay out black and winding along the center of the valley. Shadowy cottonwoods and alders and dark beds of moss and oxalis climbed away up the sloping banks. A fall sun, huge through the morning mist, crept up over the rim of the White Mountains in the east, and the swirls and ripples of the river caught glints of light and sparkled.

  Jonathan Bing and Ahab sat on a log below town where the river began to wind slowly around a great bend. Jonathan threw pebbles into a pool of slowly eddying water along the bank with his right hand. His chin rested on his left hand, and it seemed to Ahab that his master wasn’t really enjoying his rock throwing. Every now and then a great frog, usually green and striped, came sailing past on a lily pad that had torn loose from a distant lily pad jungle. Each one looked at Jonathan and Ahab with huge unblinking eyes as if he knew a terrible or wonderful secret which the two on the bank wished they knew but didn’t. And the secret, if there was one, slipped away down the river as the frogs sailed their crafts around the swerve of the shore and into shadow.

  The rising sun should have been a welcome sight to the Cheeser, who had been sitting on the log for an hour or so and whose trousers had soaked up a good bit of the morning dew. It was the morning of the day of departure, and sun on such a day couldn’t help but be welcome. The wind and rain of the past days were forgotten, Jonathan’s raft was packed with cheeses and provisions and even empty casks which he would use for the storage of cakes and gifts on the return voyage.

  And that’s why the sun wasn’t such a welcome sight. Now nothing was left but for Jonathan and Ahab to climb aboard and cast off. A crowd of villagers, up with the sun, already lined the docks where the raft was moored. Within the hour they’d be trudging homeward to hot biscuits and gravy and thick strips of bacon and cups of dark coffee. Jonathan didn’t much want to thin
k about that.

  The sun meant, then, that he’d have to wander back down to the dock and set out, alone. He wasn’t in a mood to pace and think as he had been on the night of Dooly’s visit, nor was he tearing at his hair or gnashing his teeth or furrowing his brow as people in books might. Instead, he simply sat there like a lump and plopped stones in among the green forests of water plants.

  A familiar voice hailed him from above. ‘Hallo there, Jonathan!’ The tone was altogether too bluff for either the hour or the occasion. It had to be Gilroy Bastable come to fetch him. ‘Here you are then!’ shouted Gilroy.

  Jonathan waved up at him.

  ‘Why it’s daylight, man! Sun-up. Old Mr Sun himself has come along to see to the launching, Bing my boy!’ Gilroy Bastable came clumping down and sat on the log. Since his winter hat had gone downriver in the storm, he’d been forced to wear his summer hat, a very wide and wonderful hat. He scratched Ahab behind the ear, an odd thing since Gilroy Bastable generally held no concourse with dogs. But Ahab, I suppose, had become a sort of hero dog, and so perhaps it wasn’t such an odd thing. Old Bastable cleared his throat about seven times, and sneezed calamitously. His hat jumped off his head because of the violence of the sneeze and, being round like a wheel, began to roll down toward the swirling waters. Gilroy Bastable, it turned out, moved wonderfully fast for a man of his age and size. Ahab, however, was every bit as quick and leaped for the hat almost as soon as it pitched off. Both Ahab and Gilroy scoured along the bank for the space of thirty feet, Bastable with one hand pressed to the top of his head as if to hold down the very hat that he was chasing. The two of them caught up with the renegade hat right at the water’s edge and lunged for it simultaneously. Ahab charged in between Gilroy Bastable’s legs, whereupon the mayor, with a shout of surprise, tumbled head over heels toward his rolling hat which went twirling up into the air. Gilroy rolled to a stop in a clump of grass, and Ahab, in his wild rush, bounced into him. The spiraling hat settled onto Ahab’s head and perched there. Sailing past on a bed of river grasses and lily pads, a group of wide-eyed frogs paused momentarily before the disheveled mayor, whose legs and arms splayed out in every direction, and the dog Ahab, who wore a hat that was clearly too small for him. Now it was the frogs’ turn to wonder at the goings on. Jonathan stepped along and helped Gilroy Bastable to his feet then removed the hat from Ahab’s head, dusting it once or twice for good measure. That done, the three set off up the path toward town.