The Elfin Ship

by James P. Blaylock

  Walking along toward them over a little path bordered by hedgerows of dogwood, he seemed to be very leisurely about the whole thing. As he approached, however, he appeared to Jonathan to be stooping just a bit, as if he carried some fairly heavy weight on his shoulders. He was clearly warm – exerted from his exercise – an odd thing indeed on so cool a day.

  He was dressed in a tweedy sort of coat, and wore a vest beneath it that was covered with moons and stars and whirling planets. As he strode near, he hailed the elves and rafters and squinted at the lot of them through a pair of spectacles that made his eyes look as if they were being seen through a telescope. His trousers appeared to be spun of gold thread, which might, of course, have been the case. His head was bald but for a peculiar thatch of hair over either ear – it was almost a Mayor Bastable haircut, but not nearly so wild.

  The Moon Man – for that’s how Jonathan thought of him – was a peculiar-looking person, there was little doubt about that, but it was easy to see that he might well be a king of some nature. Behind his spectacles his eyes were very jolly, but Jonathan could see that there was some nature of seriousness on his mind. As with the Squire, however, Jonathan would find that the Moon Man liked the right sorts of things: eating apple pie and cream for breakfast, capering with platypi on the riverbanks, strolling along between hedgerows, admiring marbles with the Squire and, it turned out in time, investigating the mysteries of kaleidoscopes and paperweights.

  He shook Jonathan’s hand, addressing him as a ‘cheeser’ and saying hello, then mentioning that he dabbled in the cheesemaking arts himself. ‘Nothing so wonderful as raisin cheese,’ he said, ‘just some fairly tolerable green cheese.’

  Jonathan regretted he hadn’t any raisin cheese with him and was tempted to inquire more deeply into the nature of local cheesemaking facilities – to ‘talk shop’ as they say. But he decided to wait for a more leisurely moment. He had always disliked bringing about discussions that concerned himself in which others of the company could take no part. Such a thing smacked of a type of selfishness he didn’t at all like.

  The Squire had gathered all his marbles and returned them to the leather sack, miraculously grown to a sufficient size to house them all. He rose, hoisted the sack over a round shoulder, and nodded toward the Moon Man. ‘Where is Mr Ackroyd? We must see Mr Ackroyd. The Squire has business with him. Pie business.’

  ‘Mr Ackroyd is inside,’ said Bufo. ‘He’s fetching out the pies at this moment, Squire.’

  ‘I will speak to Ackroyd,’ replied the Squire.

  The Moon Man, a jolly enough sort it turned out, and a great friend of the Squire, took his arm and set out toward the palace door. ‘We’ll find Mr Ackroyd together, sir.’ The Squire looked very pleased.

  The palace, although rocky and somber, was very satisfactory inside. Long halls led off in every direction from a great antechamber, and thick rugs, woven in pleasant springtime colors, lined the stone floors. Clusters of glowing crystals, rose quartz from the look of them, hung from the ceiling and served admirably as lamps. Jonathan was at a loss to understand how they glowed by themselves until the Professor, anticipating his wonderment, leaned over and explained: ‘Fire quartz. Very rare stuff. The dwarfs mine it beneath the Emerald Cliffs. They say the stuff glows for five hundred years.’

  The party trouped along into a great hall bisected by a heavy, battered and age-darkened table set with mugs and forks and plates and such. Two young dwarfs poured thick coffee into the mugs, the steam floating about the hall carrying the odor of coffee and cinnamon.

  Twickenham introduced Jonathan to another dwarf who unloaded pies from a wooden cart on wheels. He was a stout, bearded sort, and he shook Jonathan’s hand until Jonathan began to wonder if he ever intended to stop. ‘So you’re the famous Bing?’ said the dwarf, nodding shrewdly at him.

  ‘I am indeed,’ Jonathan replied.

  ‘I,’ said the dwarf, ‘am Ackroyd the baker. You may have heard of me.’

  Jonathan of course had – not only because his cheeses were housed at Ackroyd’s bakery, but because Ackroyd the baker’s name was known for miles beyond Twombly Town in the high valley, mostly because of his honeycakes. Ackroyd was tall for a dwarf, coming up almost to Jonathan’s chest; his beard hung below his belt. It was a patchy, ragged sort of beard due to being singed in one way or another almost daily while Ackroyd loaded ovens in his bakery. The dwarf opened a flap in his coat and removed an object wrapped in waxed paper, inviting Jonathan to take a peek at it as if it were contraband. It turned out to be a honeycake. ‘First of the season,’ said Ackroyd with a note of mysticism in his voice.

  ‘Indeed,’ said Jonathan, looking at the little cake which was so phenomenally good. ‘Sorry not to have come round to talk business, by now, Mr Ackroyd.’

  ‘Just Ackroyd, if you will. And it’s quite all right. Your cheeses are in tiptop shape, and we’ve plenty of time for business. Too much time. Damn all business.’

  Jonathan rather liked the baker’s attitude. He was far more concerned with his honeycakes than with transactions. That was a healthy sign.

  The Squire lumbered toward them with a wild but identifiable look in his eye. Bufo, seeing that only half the pies were on the table, made an attempt to waylay him. Ackroyd said to Jonathan, ‘Do you know who gets this cake?’

  ‘I haven’t any idea.’

  ‘The Squire. No one appreciates a good cake as much as the Squire. You wouldn’t know it to look at him, but the Squire is an important sort.’

  ‘Is he?’ asked Jonathan.

  ‘Oh my, yes. When old King Soot passes on, it’ll be the Squire who replaces him. King of the linkmen he’ll be, from Seaside to the Highland Top to the White Mountains.’

  Jonathan glanced over at Squire Myrkle supposing that somehow his eyes had betrayed him into supposing the Squire slothful. But no, there he stood, listening politely to one of Bufo’s poems while eyeballing the pies. He broke in, finally, not being able to hold out any longer. ‘The Squire will have some pie and cream. The Squire will taste a pie.’

  ‘Odd sort of king,’ said Jonathan.

  ‘Not at all. He’s a perfect linkman king. He has two passions, eating and collecting marbles. They say he has deep cellars filled with chests of marbles and that he has one huge crystal globe – a marble fit for a giant – that has little stairways cut through it so that the Squire can climb about inside through rooms of glass. Just the sort to be king of the linkmen.’ And with that, Ackroyd presented the Squire with the cake.

  ‘A cake, a cake!’ the Squire cried, smiling triumphantly. ‘Here we have a cake!’ Squire Myrkle looked solemn for a moment, and everyone around fell silent. ‘Jolly good Ackroyd,’ he said, ‘has brought along a cake for the Squire!’

  ‘Good old Ackroyd!’ Dooly shouted.

  ‘Hurrah, hurrah!’ everyone yelled, and the Squire smashed the honeycake down his throat, nodding heartily and reaching immediately for a mug of coffee to wash it down.

  They all finally sat along the table. Jonathan, Dooly, the Professor, the linkmen arid Ackroyd the baker sat on one side and Twickenham and Blump and the rest of the elves sat along the other. At the head of the table sat the Moon Man, and opposite him, twenty feet away, sat a grizzled, serious dwarf in a brown robe who turned out to be the fisherman king, Grump. It occurred to Jonathan that King Grump had been given an unfortunate name, although it was a name that seemed to fit. His face was lined and weathered like the pilings of the pier to which he no doubt moored his trawler. He looked entirely out of place here, as if he wished he were casting cod nets off the Channel Islands. Although he proved genial enough as kings go, he took little obvious interest in the proceedings. When Ahab wandered past, however, and sniffed at him once or twice, King Grump fed him a piece of crust and patted his head. Jonathan decided that he was all right.

  They tied into the apple pie and cream. It was very thick and, like all good apple pie, had a good deal of cinnamon in it. After the first slice another was heap
ed on Jonathan’s plate, and his cup was filled again with the rich and powerful coffee. Jonathan noted that no one in the room refused a second slice and that the Moon Man seemed to be eating his piece with at least as much pleasure as anyone else. He declined a third slice, however, as did Jonathan and everyone else except Dooly and the Squire.

  Finally they all sat sipping at coffee and chatting pleasantly, and Jonathan thought to himself that if all ‘conclaves of war’ were conducted in this manner he’d volunteer as a general or admiral or something. But he feared that they’d all been summoned to the castle for other reasons than simply gobbling up Ackroyd’s pies.

  It was Twickenham, who rose and waved everyone silent. All of a sudden he looked very important and dignified. He cleared his throat several times and strode back and forth purposefully in front of a diamond-paned window. In the rays of sunlight shining in through the window he too looked as if he were vaguely transparent. Twickenham as well as Blump’s company were what were known as light elves. Though it had always seemed outlandish to Jonathan, he had heard it said that the light elves rather dissolved away as they aged and that after hundreds of years they seemed to be made of bands of translucent rippling color, then, as time passed, of clearest crystal, finally disappearing altogether from the sight of mortals. No one knew for sure, of course, aside from the elves themselves, since disappeared things can never be entirely counted on. The Professor, no doubt, knew of a scientific theory to account for the phenomenon, and Jonathan intended to inquire about it at a more convenient moment.

  Anyway, Twickenham paused and raised a finger in a gesture of seriousness. ‘We’re not here …’ the elf began, only to be interrupted by young Stick-a-bush, who burst into laughter over the fact that the Squire hadn’t eaten any of his pie crusts. He had left them in a little heap on his plate.

  Twickenham scowled at Stick-a-bush, and he was immediately silent. ‘We’re not here,’ he continued, ‘to lark about!’ He squinted a bit severely again at Stick-a-bush, who slumped. ‘This is a serious day, a momentous day. A day on which the gate of the fates hinges.’

  The crowd was silent. There were few days that could be considered momentous in the course of the year, and when one arose it wasn’t to be taken lightly. Bufo cleared his throat loudly. ‘I have a poem here, Mr Twickenham, that, I believe, is appropriate. If I might have everyone’s attention …’

  ‘Save the poem, Bufo,’ said Twickenham. ‘Keep the poem in your hat. We haven’t time to dawdle over poetry or larks.’

  ‘Or mig-weed,’ said Yellow Hat.

  ‘Or, as you say, mig-weed,’ Twickenham continued. ‘We have visitors here – and important ones at that. Each in his own way important. And the most important of all, begging everyone’s pardon, is this lad here.’ He waved his hand in Dooly’s direction.

  Dooly looked about to see who this important person might be. Surely he must mean the Cheeser. But no, there sat Jonathan Bing and the Professor. No one was pointing at them. There was no one else. It was Dooly they were after. He wasn’t sure what to say, and his first response was to feel guilty, only because there was nothing he could think of to feel proud about.

  At the other end of the table Squire Myrkle had been fishing marbles out of his bag, examining them, and handing each in turn to one of the elves who sat on either side of him. They seemed monstrously pleased. Jonathan would have thought that the elves would have long since tired of such wonders, having an abundance of them on call, but then we never tire of those things we honestly enjoy any more than we tire of eating good apple pie. Anyway, Twickenham shot the two elves a stern look, and they put the marbles away. Twickenham seemed to be giving looks to a lot of the company that morning, but it’s true that they had very serious business to attend to. ‘Show friend Dooly your ring, Squire, like a good fellow,’ Twickenham said.

  The Squire put his bag of marbles away and winked at Dooly. Then he very slowly said, ‘Twicky Twicky Twicky Twickenham – ham sandwich,’ and waved the ring on the middle finger of his left hand in Dooly’s direction.

  ‘Have you seen such a ring?’ Twickenham asked Dooly.

  ‘No, sir,’ Dooly replied, taken aback by this sudden concern with rings. ‘I mean, yes, sir. I mean to say, your honor, that such a ring has passed by my eye globes at one time, sir. But only for a bit. It wasn’t me that borrowed it, I’m sure.’ Dooly said all of this with one of his hands buried in his coat pocket.

  ‘Might I see your own?’ asked Twickenham of Dooly.

  ‘My own, sir?’

  ‘Ring, my boy. Your sea ring. The ring of Oceania Profundis. The one with, if I guess rightly, the squid upon it. The chambered nautilus.’

  Dooly reluctantly drew his hand from under the table and showed Twickenham the ring. The elves and linkmen rose and bent toward Dooly to have a look at it as did Jonathan and the Professor.

  Dooly’s ring and the Squire’s ring had both, undoubtedly, been cast by the same smith. The Squire’s was larger and pictured the raised form of one of those feathery plantlike fish with flaps of skin waving about as if they forgot to tuck in their clothes – and commonly called frogfish. In its eye was a blue diamond.

  ‘Where, Squire Myrkle, did you obtain your ring?’ asked Twickenham.

  ‘It was a gift, Mr Twickenham.’ The Squire paused for a moment then said in a deep voice again, ‘Twicky Twicky Twickenham,’ and laughed heartily. Everyone but Mr Twickenham laughed.

  ‘A gift from whom?’

  ‘Why from Theophile Escargot, who I gave a little cart to once. Carrying things, he was, which he had found, he said. Traded him straight across for this ring.’

  ‘Just so,’ said Mr Twickenham, who seemed pleased to have gotten a sensible answer. ‘And you, Dooly, do you know this Escargot?’

  ‘Yes, sir. No, sir. Yes, sir,’ replied Dooly.

  ‘Contrary sort, aren’t you?’ said the elf.

  ‘Yes, sir, sir. Begging your pardon, but that isn’t his real name, although he likes it well enough.’

  ‘And how would you know?’

  ‘Because, sir, he’s what you might call my grandfather, sir, and my mother’s father to boot. And her name, if I might carry on some, was Stover, sir, which would make his the same and not, begging everyone’s pardon, Escar-what-is-it. He was a great one for fun, was Grandpa.’

  Twickenham strode back and forth behind the Moon Man, who seemed about to fall asleep. ‘Did your grandfather, by any chance, Dooly, my lad, ever come across a pocketwatch that was at all out of the ordinary?’

  ‘Not really,’ said Dooly casting his eyes groundward.

  Jonathan cleared his throat meaningfully.

  ‘Well, once,’ Dooly added.

  ‘Ah,’ said Twickenham. ‘And did it have a face upon it?’

  ‘Yes, but I didn’t never have nothing of the sort,’ Dooly said, lapsing into bad grammar because of his excitement.

  ‘Of course not, of course not,’ Twickenham assured him.

  Dooly looked as if he were about to cry, sure as he could be that he was guilty of some dread thing, although he had no idea what dread thing that was. Surely they couldn’t hold him responsible for the fact that his grandfather loved to borrow things, names included. He was relieved when the conversation passed on to something else.

  Twickenham gestured at the wonderful oboe weapon which the Professor had brought along to the gathering. ‘And you, Professor, do you know what that is, that thing you carry?’

  ‘Indeed, sir,’ said the Professor, exhibiting the odd device to those around the table. ‘It is an apparatus I found several years ago along the river near Stooton. It was entangled about the ruined mast of a certain vessel.’

  ‘That would be the Galleon of the Lakes of Luna, mired in Stooton Slough?’

  ‘Uh, yes,’ said the Professor after a moment’s hesitation. ‘This is, I have determined, a weapon which works according to the three major urges: velocity, pendulosity, and whirl.’

  ‘A weapon?’ said Twickenham, s
miling a tad for the first time. The Professor looked just a bit put out. His assumption that it was a weapon had been reached after some fairly painstaking study.

  ‘May I have a look at it?’ asked Twickenham.

  ‘Of course.’

  Twickenham looked it up and down thoroughly as did the other two elves. All of them chattered with excitement. ‘It’s perfect,’ Twickenham concluded.

  The Professor smiled triumphantly.

  ‘But it’s not a weapon.’

  The Professor sputtered, feeling foolish. He’d gotten all his understanding from elf runes, so it was likely that elves would know the truth about it.

  ‘It’s of far greater worth, sir,’ said Twickenham. ‘And I think it may be useful to us all. What do you think?’

  ‘Just as you say,’ said Professor Wurzle, ‘I ask only to be useful.’

  Twickenham bowed in response, handed the Professor his device, and cast a look at the Moon Man, who was polishing his glasses.

  He tucked the glasses into a case, then put on a spectacularly large pair which made his eyes look as if they were in fishbowls. He paused for a moment and wearily lit his pipe, at which point several of the elves in the hall did the same. Jonathan, knowing that it was correct to follow his host’s example, lit his own. He didn’t at all like the tone of the conversation so far, and he liked it even less when the Moon Man put away his tamper and said in a grave voice, ‘Christmas is coming on and every day we slide farther into a season which may well be grim beyond our fears. We must prepare for it!’

  Jonathan puffed thoughtfully. Dooly seemed to be melting away into his chair, fearing, of course, that the grim fears were somehow his fault. Jonathan wasn’t at all sure why the approaching season was to be so fearfully rotten. He knew, it’s true, that all wasn’t well along the Oriel, but how the goblins and the strange doings at Willowood and Hightower and Stooton could concern the Moon Man or even the dwarfs in their fortified city of Seaside was beyond him. It was true, thought Jonathan with a bit of a shudder, that the Moon Man’s face had turned up rather often in the past, but that didn’t make all this business any more evident. Perhaps it was all a bit like a spider web. From a distance the pattern is clear, but for a bug caught up in it, it’s just a tangle of threads running out in every direction toward the horizon. He had hoped that the Moon Man would sort things out for him – that he and the Professor and Dooly would be able to do a bit of fishing off the pier and have a leisurely supper or two with the linkmen and then have a cheerful trip home carrying a paperweight and a carton of books.