The Elfin Ship

by James P. Blaylock

  Jonathan wasn’t entirely dumbfounded. Escargot obviously figured heavily in the doings of the high valley – perhaps he was responsible for them in a way. Certainly he and this oddball pocketwatch were the Moon Man’s major concern.

  ‘You hope,’ said Jonathan in a questioning tone, ‘that Dooly’s grandfather will travel upriver with us. But you don’t know?’

  ‘Not until we ask,’ the Moon Man replied. ‘But I rather believe he can be convinced to come along. Young Dooly himself will help with that angle. He’ll come, sirs, like it or no.’

  ‘But he can’t be forced,’ said Jonathan. ‘Not if we’re to be responsible for him. And what can he do by himself, anyway?’

  ‘Well,’ said the Moon Man, ‘there’s a certain pocketwatch. Rather an odd pocketwatch, actually …’

  ‘Which,’ interrupted Jonathan, ‘can be used by nefarious types like Escargot to steal apple pies and lumps of cheese.’

  ‘Without question it can,’ replied the Moon Man. ‘And it can overwhelm elf galleons in Stooton Slough and bring about the ruin of a fine and trusted crew. And it can send Willowood Station all to smash and do the same, my dear fellows, to Stooton and Seaside and Twombly Town and Brompton Village and who knows what all else. Theophile Escargot, gentlemen, is going to steal that watch. He stole it once, excuse me if I don’t mince words, and he’s going to steal it again with, hopefully, the help of the Professor’s odd device.’

  The Professor scratched his head. His oboe weapon was at the inn, but he wished he had brought it along, since the Moon Man very obviously knew what it was and could have enlightened him to one or two features about it – its unfortunate desire, for example, to sail around in big circles – which the Professor was still uncertain about.

  ‘The device,’ said the Moon Man, ‘was built by Langley Snood; you may have heard of him.’

  ‘Who hasn’t?’ asked the Professor. Jonathan was fairly sure he hadn’t, but nodded his head in agreement with old Wurzle.

  ‘It was Snood and his company,’ the Moon Man explained, ‘who were very unfortunately surprised and overwhelmed by the strange storm on Stooton Slough, but it wasn’t the storm alone that accounted for their defeat. Snood’s device, gentlemen, was designed to find that selfsame watch – possessed now by the insidious Dwarf on Hightower Ridge. It serves no other function. If the watch is within shouting distance of Snood’s device, the device will lead you to it. Infallibly. The watch must be found and it must be stolen, and all must be done with great secrecy, unless the thief is to meet the same fate met by Langley Snood on Stooton Slough.’

  The Professor was awed, but was hugely pleased. His finding and repairing of the wonderful device was of far more consequence than he had hoped. ‘We’ll do what we can,’ he said.

  ‘Of course,’ agreed Jonathan. ‘And the sooner we launch out, the better. It sounds as if our journey upriver will be at least as adventuresome as was our journey down.’

  ‘Do as you like,’ said the Moon Man. ‘If you’ll agree simply to cart Escargot upriver, I’ll be obliged to you. You need promise nothing more. And as to launching out, we’ll do so this very afternoon. After you gather Dooly up and eat a bite of lunch you can meet Twickenham and his crew at the palace around one. Mr Twickenham, gentlemen, is my lieutenant and will henceforth be, as they say, in charge. I’m afraid that I must sail along home. It doesn’t do me any good to be gone long. Brings on something frightfully similar to rheumatism, if you follow me.’

  Jonathan didn’t, entirely, but admired Twickenham, and, although he didn’t much care to either take orders or give them, he’d as soon take them from Twickenham as from anyone.

  ‘About the coins,’ said the Moon Man, almost as an afterthought. ‘Do you have them with you?’

  Jonathan untied his bag. Of course. You were going to show me how to order them, weren’t you?’ Actually, he wasn’t keen on knowing much about their order. He was happy with the idea that things had order, but he found that they often remained more mysterious and wonderful if the order wasn’t revealed. Also, with each revelation lately he seemed to become that much more tightly ensnared in the whole dark pocketwatch business. He held the coins in his open palm.

  ‘Their secret is simple,’ said the Moon Man. ‘Point the noses of the fish toward each of the four points of the compass.’

  Jonathan did, and there, shimmering into focus on the coins, was the winking face of the Moon Man. Jonathan flipped one of the coins and the face disappeared. ‘Simple as that?’ he asked. ‘No abracadabra?’

  The Moon Man shook his head. ‘No magic words. Nothing mysterious.’ He stood up and dusted off the seat of his trousers. ‘That’s all I have to say, gentlemen, beyond thanking you for being so cooperative.’

  ‘Our pleasure,’ said the Professor, extending his hand. The three of them parted company, Jonathan and Professor Wurzle departing for the inn.

  Having nothing else in particular to say, Jonathan quoted a line from Ashbless, a favorite poet of his: ‘When at last the die of battle cast by fates has tumbled still, in feathered expectation, wait I will.’

  ‘Sounds apt,’ said the Professor. ‘Is that G. Smithers?’

  ‘Ashbless,’ said Jonathan.

  ‘I should have known,’ said the Professor. ‘ “Feathered expectation”? It sounds as if it were narrated by a bird.’

  A man disguised as an ostrich, actually,’ said Jonathan.

  The Professor nodded, then pointed off toward a point midway down the block and at the other side of the street. There stood Dooly next to a fountain – a cut stone circle with a bronze fish spouting water in the center of it – and Dooly seemed to be floating scores of miniature paper flowers on the surface of the water. Pretty as it was, the flowers would inevitably foul the works of the fountain, and the Professor said so, in a kindly way. They cleared the fountain and floated the flowers away down the running gutter before proceeding to the inn, Dooly in tow. At one o’clock they were there at the palace with Twickenham, his crew, and the elfin airship, amazed to find themselves actually climbing aboard the craft.

  14

  The Hum of the Devices

  The idea of flying – of being more than a few feet above the ground in fact – all of a sudden seemed a bad idea to Jonathan. Dooly, apparently, thought it an even worse idea. He slumped into a padded seat and sort of scrunched his head down between his shoulders as if trying to disappear. The Professor, however, was in his element. Jonathan could almost see the gears whirring and spinning inside his head. An elf in the seat in front of them took the whole affair matter-of-factly. His name, it turned out, was Thrimp. The Professor immediately began to question him about the nature of airships, but didn’t seem at all satisfied with Thrimp’s explanations.

  Meanwhile, the four linkmen were engaged in squabbles of some sort – Bufo and Yellow Hat insulted each other, and Squire Myrkle tickled the inside of Stick-a-bush’s ear with a duck feather, hiding the feather each time Stick-a-bush lurched around. When the commotion finally ceased, the Squire poked Stick-a-bush with the feather again, which somehow caused them all to start thrashing and shouting and arguing. Of the four of them, only the Squire seemed to be enjoying himself.

  Jonathan, worrying mildly about the likelihood of flying machines, was amazed to see the meadow dropping away below them. There was no roaring or lurching – they simply floated upward as the green meadow seemed to grow beneath them. Soon the long hedgerows could be seen ambling away in no particular pattern. They could see that the top of the palace was in need of repair, many of the tiles on the roof being broken and all of them covered with a thick layer of moss.

  To the north, up the coast, a dense forest grew almost to the edge of the sea. Dim hills could be seen miles and miles away to the northwest, hunching up and up until they disappeared in the misty distance. Inside the airship all was quiet. Squire Myrkle no longer larked about, but stared through the window in wonder. The hum of the mechanisms, which were so clearly audible to Jonat
han on the day of his adventure with the trolls, could barely be heard. Everyone, including Thrimp the elf, had his face plastered against the window.

  As Jonathan stared groundward, the view was suddenly lost in a swirl of mist. ‘Fog!’ Jonathan thought, as he peered out and saw, not fog, but a little puffy cloud directly below. It was floating like a crazily shaped balloon and looked rather like Squire Myrkle.

  But for the cloud the day was really very clear. Away upriver Jonathan could see farmhouses and barns nestled among orchards, and dark willow-lined canals winding through. Tiny rowboats or canoes dotted the canals – dwarfs out fishing for catfish and squibalump, no doubt. Looking at the pleasant landscape below, it was difficult to imagine that a few miles upriver tendrils of evil were spreading out through the countryside as weird vines covered the ruined houses of Willowood. With smoke floating up out of chimneys and pies being baked in ovens, the farmhouses and cottages below made Jonathan homesick. He wished, just for a moment, that he was in one of those cottages with a couple of Ackroyd’s cakes and a mug of hot punch. But then he considered the fact that he was already in a fairly wonderful place. Mayor Bastable, Jonathan thought, would trade away every hat he owned and take a job as a stableboy if such things would gain him a ride in an airship.

  Soon they passed above the great wall, and Jonathan could see the roof of the Cap’n Mooneye below and the winding streets that led along the water and up toward the palace on the hill. Shielding their eyes from the afternoon sun, people on the street gazed skyward as the airship passed overhead.

  Seaside disappeared behind them, and they sailed peacefully above the rocky coastline for a bit, Jonathan catching a glimpse now and then of what seemed to be a tremendous bank of clouds moving toward them in an awful hurry. They sailed in and out of patches of mist until, finally, instead of sailing out again, the ship whirred deeper into the clouds.

  Jonathan was disappointed since the air journey would be much more interesting with the ground visible below. But then here was an opportunity to see what the inside of a cloud was really like. He was pretty sure there would be no lakes full of colored fishes as he’d once imagined, yet there might be something wonderful, who could say, in among the clouds.

  But between the layers of clouds were spaces of air, and the only surprises were occasional forks of lightning that would crack along frightfully close to the ship and make them all jump and shout and hold their hands over their ears. Dooly was white and shaking and peering out through his fingers which he smashed against his face. Ahab, sound asleep on Dooly’s lap, emitted a snort now and again – usually a moment before thunder cracked – that would set Dooly trembling in anticipation. The Professor had told Jonathan once that dogs, being one of the four major branches of domesticated nature, were, as he put it, ‘Alert to the profundities of weather.’

  They were out of the other end of the cloud bank fairly quickly, however. They had passed through what might be called a squall that apparently was dashing along down the coast toward Seaside, as if trying to arrive before dumping all its rain.

  Below them, when they were out of the weather, were high cliffs and rolling ocean. Dark forests covered the hillsides above the cliffs, and for as far as Jonathan could see – miles and miles and miles – there were no houses or farms or villages, just deep woods cut here and there by a winding river.

  Dooly seemed to cheer up somewhat after the thunder and lightning fell behind, and he and Stick-a-bush chatted about the storms they’d been involved in. The Professor and Thrimp exchanged theories about lightning, none of which sounded at all likely to Jonathan. Somehow the lightning conversation went the way of all good scientific discussions; that is to say, it moved along from lightning to weather in general, then to other sorts of natural marvels. Finally they came round to flying, whereupon the Professor, rather oddly, insisted that what they were at that moment doing was, if not impossible, at least highly unlikely.

  ‘Ach!’ said Thrimp. ‘Flying is nothing. Any elf child over the age of three can explain it away in a moment. Just look at the pelican, Professor. He is, you’ll admit, the most foolish bird of all, and yet he has no trouble flying. Flying is nothing.’

  Jonathan thought that Thrimp’s argument about the simplicity of flying was what one of his teachers had called a logical fallacy. But it didn’t much matter who called it what, the Professor wasn’t about to be convinced without seeing some proof – some evidence.

  Old Wurzle was thoughtful for a moment and then said, ‘I once saw, Mr Thrimp, a sight that even you and your people would goggle at. There was a dwarf up in Little Beddlington with an ape – I believe it was an orangutan – that would shout “The Madman’s Lament” as if it had been treading the boards for a decade!’

  Thrimp screwed up his face and chanted:

  ‘Woe unto drunkards bloated with ale

  Chased beyond darkness where creeping things pale

  At the sight of a gibbering, floundering torment –

  The thing on all fours, the Madman’s Lament!’

  ‘You’ve seen it!’ cried the Professor.

  ‘The thing on all fours?’ Jonathan, who hadn’t heard the stanza of the poem before, gasped.

  ‘No, the Beddlington Ape,’ said the Professor.

  ‘At the fair at the City of the Five Monoliths,’ Thrimp replied. ‘The “Thing on all fours” I have no wish to see.’

  ‘But science, my good Thrimp,’ the Professor, brought the discussion back round to his original point, ‘has a place for the Beddlington Ape. It’s a matter of rays emanated from the lower reaches of the eyeball. Somnambulism it’s called, as you are no doubt already aware. But science, with its charts and forces, has no room in it at present for the flight of an airship. No, Mr Thrimp, I prefer a scientific explanation, and would like to have one in regard to the operation of this ship.’

  Thrimp nodded. ‘I suppose I can arrange it, Professor. You are, of course, absolutely correct. I’ll ask Twickenham for permission to tour the propulsion apparatus room.’

  ‘This is more like it,’ the Professor said to Jonathan as Thrimp disappeared through the door which led to the forward compartment, the room with the emerald walls. ‘I can barely imagine the gyros and combines and anti-force apparatus that operate this machine.’

  ‘They must be compact,’ said Jonathan, unable to determine where such things could be hidden on the tiny cylindrical ship.

  ‘Oh, elves are immensely clever,’ said the Professor. ‘Especially with miniatures.’

  Thrimp returned and beckoned to Jonathan and the Professor to follow him. They passed through the door into a room of glowing green light where Twickenham and another elf engaged in conversation. Twickenham doffed his hat and bowed.

  ‘Professor,’ he said. ‘I have infinite respect for a man of science. It’s not to anyone that I’d reveal the workings of our craft which is, you’ll find, very deceptive and improbable. But to you and Mr Bing I’m honored to grant such a boon.’ Twickenham bowed again as did Jonathan and the Professor and Dooly, who, fearing to be left behind, had followed his two companions forward. Ahab, who didn’t care a penny for either science or airships, remained sleeping in Dooly’s seat.

  Jonathan noticed a rather small door in the side of the ship which, anyone would assume, led into empty space. In fact, swirls of clouds were visible through the deep green of the emerald from which it was cut. Thrimp led them toward that door which seemed to swing open by itself, or rather to simply fade from green to blue to black – the same sort of black the night is made of. The three companions peered into the darkness. Then the Professor began to step through, but Thrimp put a hand on his arm and restrained him.

  ‘I can’t see a thing,’ the Professor reported.

  ‘It’s cold,’ said Dooly.

  ‘It’s dark as pitch,’ the Professor said, ‘but I think I hear the hum of the devices.’

  Jonathan held his breath and could hear, very faintly, a roaring sound – more the shouting of w
ind in a deep canyon than the hum of a machine. He began to wish he were elsewhere.

  The darkness, however, either began to brighten or their eyes began to grow accustomed to the dark. They could make out the vague outlines of a vast, dimensionless room without any observable walls or floor or ceiling. The echoes of shouts and creaking ropes and the clacking operation of vaguely outlined machinery became clearer and clearer – great millwheel devices and a slowly spinning cube suspended in air; a forest of hanging ropes and chains attached to pulleys and cranks were almost invisible in the air above. A host of little men dressed in leather coats and white aprons, many with pencils stuck behind ears, scribbled on paper note pads and shouted incoherent orders to one another. Jonathan could hear words and phrases which he supposed the Professor understood. Things like, ‘Treppan the lumen!’ and ‘Haul on the crank-about!’ and ‘Overcome the sky tides!’ were tossed back and forth by the little men in a haphazard but essential way as they worked furiously, yanking on pulleys and twirling little merry-go-round apparatus that glowed in the deep reaches of the room miles and miles away, it seemed, like wild pinwheels.

  Thrimp, somehow, shut the door, and the three found themselves looking at clouds through an emerald wall.

  ‘That’s the most amazing thing I’ve seen.’ Professor Wurzle had a look of awe on his face. ‘What were those spinning devices?’

  ‘What do you suppose?’ asked Thrimp.

  ‘Why I’ve no doubt they’re gyros of a sort,’ Wurzle replied.

  ‘That’s exactly it. Gyros is what they are. As many as you please.’

  ‘Ah.’ The Professor shook his head, obviously puzzled. ‘As many gyros as I please,’ he muttered as they trooped out and resumed their seats.

  Jonathan wasn’t sure what he’d just seen, but he was fairly sure that whatever it was, it had very little to do with the running of the ship. Or perhaps, it had everything to do with it. Perhaps he had seen the secret of the operations of everything – of all of the Professor’s forces and laws and such. Who could say?