The Elfin Ship

by James P. Blaylock

  Perhaps the goblins made the error of supposing the Professor old and tired, for although six of the things held onto Jonathan, only three guarded him. He seemed to relax and grow cooperative for a moment – right before thrashing out with his right foot and kicking the leg-clutching goblin across the floor. He pitched the other two to the stones before the first could scramble back into the fray, and leaped across to clout one of the mob that was holding onto Jonathan. The lot of them seemed surprised and rather more anxious to race off howling than to hang onto Jonathan and let Professor Wurzle knock on their heads.

  Selznak still stood by the fire watching the fray. He hadn’t said a word. After his first effort to save the green powder, he gave up doing anything at all save pounding on the flags of the floor and shouting cryptic orders. He seemed strangely unperturbed, as if he were watching a stage play and were getting ready to call down the curtain. Behind him, roaring up in the great fireplace, orange flames raged and heaved and green sparking flashes erupted about every other minute. Twitching and dangling above the flames were a chorus line of dancing skeletons, a new one bobbing up each time the green dust set off another uproar. Now and then, when Selznak pounded his staff, one or another of them would lurch out onto the hearth and clatter away into the hall. Some of the skeletons danced briefly over the flames, only to collapse in a heap when the poof of green set another one afloat. Once a yellow skull shot out of the fire like popcorn and rolled off across the floor. The skeletons in mounting numbers traipsed back and forth in a dazed state. Selznak paid them little heed once it was clear that he could do nothing to stop the green flame, and a half dozen or so lurched finally toward the open window and made off into the night.

  By the time the Professor kicked his way loose and set upon the six goblins, the hall was a roaring tumult of green and orange spark and flame and of stumbling skeletons and wild goblins all surging to and fro in a frenzy of activity. Through it all Selznak stood placidly. He watched as Jonathan tore himself free from the last and most stalwart of his goblins and, along with the Professor, turned to face him. It seemed as if it were time for a showdown.

  Jonathan wasn’t at all sure what to do, but he was sure he’d better do it before the Beddlington Ape got back or before Selznak decided to activate a few of the skeletons that were still creeping out of the fire.

  If Snood’s device was, as Twickenham had insisted, in perfect order, then Selznak had it somewhere in his cloak; perhaps around his neck on a chain. Just as Jonathan and the Professor turned and set their sights on him – just as Jonathan thought about Snood’s device and that the watch might well be on a chain around Selznak’s neck, he found out that, in part, he was mistaken. The watch wasn’t on a chain around his neck; it was on the end of a chain and shoved into a vest pocket – a vest that the Dwarf wore beneath his cloak.

  Selznak, in fact, held the watch in his hand. Jonathan couldn’t get much of a glimpse of it. He could just see that it shined gold in the Dwarf’s palm. Whether it had any hands on it and whether they pointed toward the correct time, he couldn’t say, but he intended to find out. He lunged toward the Dwarf only to see, out of the corner of his eye, a befuddled skeleton emerge from the green flame and stumble toward him. Jonathan realized as soon as he went for the watch the skeleton would trip him up. He was right. The two of them collided, the skeleton shivered into bits, and Jonathan shot head-foremost into the pile of bones against the wall, rolling up into a sitting position before coming to a stop.

  He continued to sit there. The Professor stood half poised to spring on Selznak himself, but he didn’t spring. He just stood ready like a piece of odd statuary with a very determined look on its face. Jonathan wondered what the Professor’s problem was. Then he wondered what his own problem was – why he sat there in a heap of bones while the Dwarf walked about leering at them. The answer, of course, was the watch in the Dwarf’s hand, now on its way back to his vest pocket. Jonathan commanded himself to stand up. He focused all of his attention on his legs and, with all the mental energy he could muster, he thought, ‘Arise, legs,’ but they didn’t. Hopeless! After pondering for a bit he found it curious that he could still see and think and hear, and he wondered whether that phenomenon was due to the Dwarf’s control, or to the Dwarf’s lack of control of the watch. He wondered, too, whether being able to see and hear and think was an advantage of any sort. Given the nature of his captor, it might not be.

  Around the hall stood random, frozen skeletons, and over at the foot of the stairs were two frozen goblins, one leg in the air as if they’d been stopped in the midst of a good lively run. Across the windowsill was the hunched form of a skeleton that had been attempting to drag itself out over the casement and escape. The room was glowing with firelight, but the fire in the hearth seemed to Jonathan to be suspended, waiting there as if expecting orders of some nature. The topmost flames licking up toward the chimney were tinged with the emerald glow of the magical powder. Waiting and hovering in the green flame was the last of the grinning skeletons, fully formed, but seemingly condemned to linger there, buoyed up by the flame.

  All around Jonathan was silence, and he was conscious only of the sound of the blood in his veins and of the grim laughter that filtered into his mind and sounded as if it were an echo that had traveled a great distance to find him. It was Selznak, who was laughing; and evil grin crept across his face. He stopped grinning for a moment and reached up to pull his hat off its peg, clapping the thing down on top of his head.

  Outside all was still dark, and in the frozen fire the skeleton still waited. Jonathan sat like a pudding there on the bones. He hoped, among other things, that he wouldn’t start to drool and that his hair, which had been tousled in the collision with the skeleton, wasn’t pushed up into any ludicrous tangle. It was bad enough being sprawled out helplessly in the midst of a bone pile without adding further indignities.

  Two goblins appeared briefly at the window, one of them wearing one of Lonny Gosset’s hats. They peered in momentarily then dashed off again in a flurry of gobbling and gesticulating. Close on their heels came a third goblin, and running like Billy-O; behind him, surprisingly, was the wild and unlikely Lonny Gosset, an upraised cudgel in his right hand and a shout on his lips. Gosset didn’t even bother to look into the hall; he was after goblins, and, from the look of him, he was meeting with a certain amount of success. Jonathan wondered just how extensive the Dwarf’s power was – whether there were frozen goblins, maybe even a frozen Theophile Escargot outside in the night. Clearly there were limits, inasmuch as Gosset was anything but slowed down. There was little Jonathan could do, however, but sit and think about it.

  Selznak disappeared for a time, then appeared once again. The Professor stood staring about himself with the same look of determination, poised to spring. Lonny Gosset appeared at the window once more, himself pursued this time by the Beddlington Ape. But of all the activity that transpired roundabout him, the oddest occurrence by far concerned a coil of rope that very mysteriously floated down the stairway along the wide wooden banister. It descended about halfway, then paused there. Then it began to float upward into the complication of trestle beams that spanned and supported the ceiling of the great hall. It inched its way up a rough pillar and out across a wide hand-hewn joist, black and smooth with age.

  Jonathan watched the progress of that coil of rope, understanding as he did that Escargot hadn’t run off at all but was up to some trick. What it was, Jonathan couldn’t say. Perhaps he intended to lasso the watch – snatch it out of the Dwarf’s pocket on the end of a rope. But that seemed, all in all, fairly unlikely. After all, it really didn’t much matter to Jonathan. He couldn’t shove in and lend a hand if he wanted to.

  26

  A Vast Surprise

  It occurred to Jonathan, as the coil of rope disappeared from his sight, why Escargot had rushed off so hurriedly. Although it was true he’d gone off in search of Dooly, he no doubt also rushed away so as to be beyond the power of Selznak and
his pocketwatch. The diversion he wanted Jonathan and the Professor to create was intended to compel Selznak to use the watch. Escargot had somehow managed to slip in upstairs and creep back down again, carrying his coil of rope. If the coil had been about half its size he could have simply shoved it in under his cloak and walked smack in through the open window. That would have been more his style, or so it seemed to Jonathan. But then perhaps Escargot was taking no chances. His fear of the Dwarf and his enchantment and of the powers of the watch had likely made him wary. And Escargot, after all, had an air of confidence about him, but never an air of recklessness.

  Jonathan pondered all these things with a certain amount of satisfaction and took heart in the fact that everything was becoming considerably clearer. He hoped Professor Wurzle was alerted to the floating coil of line, but there was no way to tell. It was certain, however, that Selznak was unaware of the phenomenon. He had returned and was busy working some sort of magic over a pair of crossed bones, a toothy-looking skull, and what appeared to Jonathan to be one of those rubbery Halloween snakes. More likely it was a stuffed snake of some vile persuasion. Just what Selznak was cooking up no one but he could know. He seemed to be happiest when playing one of his magical pranks – blowing billows of fog and great undulating smoke rings out of his pipe or creating dancing, skeletons from fire and green dust and bones.

  The Dwarf reached into the fire and plucked out a flaming coal which he thrust into the mouth of the skull, setting the thing aglow like a jack-’o-lantern. Then he began to drop bits of dried leaves into the thing’s mouth, and the leaves smoked away like incense, sending dark shadows up into the hall, seeming to be winged like great wavering ghosts of bats that fluttered roundabout, some of them sailing out through the window into the night.

  What bothered Jonathan was the thought that the Dwarf’s incantations and snake-wavings and bat shadows were likely intended for something other than show – that they had something unpleasant to do with him and the Professor. And he could only wait and watch and wonder what it was that Escargot with his coil of line was up to.

  But he didn’t have to wait for too long. For as Selznak whacked at the floor with his staff and sprinkled his powders and leaves bit by bit into the glowing mouth of the skull, a very neatly and expertly tied noose came dangling along out of the ceiling beams – painfully slowly it seemed to Jonathan – and settled smoothly around Selznak’s neck.

  The Dwarf, aware of the noose only after it was already about his neck, threw his right hand out and swept the glowing skull and the snake and the crossed bones off the table where he’d been dealing with them and onto the stone floor. Jonathan watched as a look of rage mingled with amazement came onto the Dwarf’s face. He cast his staff to the ground and clutched with both hands at the tightening noose that threatened to pluck him from the floor and strangle him. Selznak’s mumblings and chantings were replaced by an echoing shriek, and he seemed to be doing a light little dance on tiptoe. His face grew red through his beard, and his eyes seemed likely to shoot out like meteors at any moment. He gasped and danced and danced and gasped, but hadn’t enough wind left in him to do anymore shrieking or cursing.

  He quit clutching, finally, at the noose around his neck and groped beneath his cloak to find his vest pocket and the pocketwatch within. When he pulled his hand from his cloak, he held the thing at arm’s length, the chain torn away from the button it was clipped to as if Selznak were wildly attempting to show it off. The rope loosened, the Dwarf dropped down onto his feet, and his eyes seemed to settle back into his head. There was a long moment while he stood thus, waiting.

  Escargot gave the rope another tug just to make his point, and Selznak jumped up onto his toes again and made his pop-eyed expression. The rope slackened and Selznak settled again, but he didn’t relax much. He looked to Jonathan, in fact, as if he suspected that whoever was up in the rafters somewhere might well give him a third tug, just for sport. Escargot’s voice, very businesslike, shouted down from overhead:

  ‘Move and you’re hung!’

  The Dwarf made a bit of an attempt to look up toward the ceiling, but that, apparently, took his head farther along in the wrong direction – a rather uncomfortable direction at that. Selznak eyed his staff lying there not three feet from him. He slowly stuck out a tentative foot to try to pull it in, but his foot hadn’t traveled more than two or three inches before the rope tightened and he was jerked upright.

  When the rope slackened he made no further effort toward the staff. He stood there as slow minutes passed, contemplating the whole affair. Finally, when it seemed certain that whoever was above him was tolerably able to wait him out, the Dwarf spoke.

  ‘Do I have the pleasure,’ he asked in a gentlemanly way, ‘of speaking to my old associate, Theophile Escargot?’

  ‘Aye,’ came the reply from above.

  ‘I thought as much,’ said Selznak. ‘Your skills haven’t diminished any over the years.’

  ‘Not a bit,’ agreed Escargot.

  ‘And the lad? How is the lad?’

  ‘Tolerably well,’ Escargot replied. ‘Pounding the daylights out of your goblins from the sound of it.’

  ‘Is he now?’ Selznak winked at Jonathan as if the two of them were in on some privileged information about that very subject. ‘My goblins seem to enjoy that sort of thing. Odd lot, goblins., The more trouble they can stir up, the happier they are. It doesn’t seem to matter if it’s they or somebody else who suffers for it. But how is the lad, really? Happy to see the old place again?’

  ‘As a lark,’ said Escargot.

  ‘He’d have been happier, I’m sure, if he’d stayed on a few months longer the first time he was here. I could have taught him quite a bit. Perhaps I will yet.’

  ‘Seems unlikely,’ said Escargot, giving the rope a twitch to two. ‘I’ll be doing most of the teaching around here. All you’re likely to do is dance.’

  Selznak shrugged. It seemed possible that Escargot knew what he was talking about. ‘Don’t mind if I have a smoke?’ the Dwarf asked.

  ‘Not at all,’ said Escargot. ‘I suppose it’s traditional.’

  Selznak let out a little, unconvincing chuckle. He returned the watch to his vest pocket, pulled out his pipe and tobacco, and proceeded to have a smoke. Jonathan half-expected to see billows of fog come rolling up out of nowhere, but they didn’t. And after all, all the fog in the world wouldn’t remove the rope from around his neck. Finally, after tamping away for a bit and puffing and relighting and tamping some more, he shoved the tobacco and matches and tamper back into a pocket and once again removed the watch, holding it up in front of himself as if checking the time. ‘What is it, exactly, that you want from me?’ asked the Dwarf, removing the pipe from his mouth. ‘I was led to believe that our score was settled. We made an agreement, after all. Or have you forgotten it? The lad for the watch. Then you saw fit to toss the pig-bird into the bargain without a bit of discussion. And what did I do? Did I turn you into a toad or set the lizards on you? No. I said to myself, it’s just old Theophile up to his pranks. And I turned the other cheek, as they say. I knew you were cowering in the underbrush at Hinkle Creek. But did I light it afire? Not a bit. I’m a philosopher, as you know, and not one to set about revenge or to take umbrage. Not Dr Selznak. And yet, here you come creeping into my home and looping rope about my neck as I go about minding my business. Insufferable, I call it. Quite insufferable.

  ‘But I’m a philosopher. I’ve pointed that out. And I’m willing to forget this entire matter. However, I’ll expect recompense from these brigands here who found it a good idea to beat out my window. Perhaps we can come to an agreement. They, unfortunately, aren’t in the mood to discuss it right now, so you can act as their counsel. What do you say?’

  Escargot remained silent.

  ‘It’s the sad case,’ said Selznak, ‘that I’m in need of parts. Nothing vital, mind you, no hearts or brains or arms or legs. I need only a liver and a spleen and twenty-odd feet of good vein
. They wouldn’t miss it.’ And he winked at Jonathan again, although it wasn’t the friendliest wink.

  ‘Wake them up,’ said Escargot, in no mood for jolliness. ‘Wake them up and give the watch to the old man. Any hint of a trick and it’s you who’ll be needing a new neck.’

  Selznak laughed, puffed on his pipe, pulled it out of his mouth and looked into the bowl as if expecting to see something wonderful in there. ‘You’re always amusing. I’ve always said that when it’s larks that are required, Theophile Escargot is the man to see. You haven’t failed me yet, sir, and apparently you’re still in good form. You’ve traded me this very interesting watch in good faith, and now you expect me to hand it back to you. Are you willing to give me the lad too? And these two nitwits. Can I have them?’

  ‘You can have this,’ said Escargot, and he gave the rope an incredible tug, sending Selznak’s pipe catapulting out of his mouth onto the floor, a burning wad of tobacco popping out of the bowl. After kicking for a few seconds, the Dwarf’s feet found the floor once again and he recovered a bit. He managed, through it all, to clutch the watch. He had a fierce look about him when the rope slackened, and the air whooshed in and out of his lungs. When he recovered he said in a hideously calm voice, ‘If you do that again, Mr Escargot, I’ll make further use of this watch, and you’ll likely join your friends down here on the floor. It would be best, in such a case, that you rather curl into a ball so that when you hit you’ll preserve your vital organs. I can’t tolerate wastefulness.’

  ‘That would be interestin’, mate,’ said Escargot in his seaworthy way, ‘but I wouldn’t hit the floor. Not hard anyway. This rope is tied around my waist and looped over a beam. If I fall, you’ll be up among the rafters, choked blind.’

  ‘And you’ll suffer great internal disruption,’ said Selznak. ‘That wouldn’t serve.’