The Accidental Highwayman

by Ben Tripp

  “Got what?” Uncle Cornelius asked.

  “My comb! My good tortoise comb!”

  “You can’t comb a tortoise,” Gruntle said. “Bain’t got no hairs on ’em.”

  “The manlings have a very famous story about a tortoise and hair,” Willum pointed out. They began to argue over what Lily meant. I crawled out from under the wagon to find it out for myself.

  “My loverly comb,” Lily said, weeping at me. “Gift from a hadmirer, it is, and the one thing of value what I possess. Now it’s gone!”

  “None here can have taken it,” I said. “Nor would they. The wee fellows have been with me ere we stopped, Morgana’s ’round the other end of the wagon, and your uncle has been discussing the architecture of Seville with that pony over there.”

  “Well it wasn’t Fred, if that’s what you mean,” said Lily.

  “I wasn’t suggesting Fred took your comb. I forgot to mention him, that’s all. He’s on the roof, making a salad with worms in.”

  “There’s but one here who might take an interest in a pretty thing like my comb,” Lily said, her eyes narrow. “One what misses fine things, pr’aps, or don’t know the value of ’em, raised among riches as might be.”

  “Lily, stop. This is beneath you,” I said, and took her by the shoulders. “You are not yourself these past few days.”

  There was a strange light in her eyes, and it occurred to me that she could be going mad. It ran in families, after all. I noticed her uncle stayed beside the horses, picking wildflowers. He might be insane, but he knew when to keep out of something.

  Morgana came around the wagon, tucking her cards away.

  “Wert thou speaking of me?” she said, and fixed Lily with a glare that would have slain me on the spot.

  “I was,” Lily huffed. “This gentleman ’ere seems to think my fine tortoise comb walked off all by itself, and I was thinking, you being of the female persuasion like myself, that you might have some idea where it’s gone to.”

  Morgana had no idea what Lily meant by this. “Art thou saying it’s been enchanted so that only a woman might find it?”

  “Only a particular individual woman of my acquaintance, to be precise.” Lily sneered. “One what has access to the little table in there and might have thought I wouldn’t miss a bit of shell. But I did miss it, and I’d like to know where it is!”

  With this, Lily thrust her fingers into the Gypsy sash wrapped around the top of Morgana’s skirts, sending the tarot fluttering all about us. I was astounded, and caught up her wrists. Morgana was briefly shocked, and then outraged, and threw up her hand, with the heel of her palm first. There was a flash and a bang and Lily flew several paces and tumbled to the ground, confounded.

  Willum and Gruntle emerged from under the wagon. Gruntle went on foot to Lily, she being conveniently located on the ground, and Willum flew up and perched beside Morgana.

  “What ho?” said Willum.

  The fury washed out of Morgana as suddenly as it had poured in. There were bright blushes on her cheeks, but she was more sorry for the magical blow than upset that Lily had accused her, I think. Still, she was so thoroughly hurt by the accusation her friend had made that she didn’t offer her a hand to get her back on her feet. Instead, she ran off a little way and sat down beside the pony, arms folded. Uncle Cornelius offered her a bouquet of flowers. She gave it a sharp look and the blooms wilted and turned brown.

  “I don’t know what caprizel she tooken, but she tooken it right between the eyes,” Gruntle said. “She’s comin’ ’round, though. No ’arm done, I think.” Lily was struggling to sit up.

  “How came I here?” she gasped. The strange look was gone from her face. She was my good Lily again.

  “You lost your tortoise comb,” said I, helping her to rise. “You made a rather unkind accusation. I suggest you owe your friend Morgana an apology.”

  “Gorblimey, my head ain’t half spinning,” Lily remarked, and sat heavily on the step of the wagon. The apology would have to wait. But as she sat down, Willum emerged from inside.

  “This comb of yours, it’s a sort of red and black thing with teeth? Bit like a batwhale’s baleen?”

  He was gripping the very article in both hands.

  “There it is!” Lily cried, and took it from him. “Oh, you’re a pet. Thank you so much. I’d kiss you but I might swallow your head,” she added, and tucked the comb into the bun of yellow hair at the back of her head.

  “Never fear,” said Willum. “Confirmed bachelor, I am.” With this, he flitted away to see to Morgana and inform her the crisis had passed.

  “Willum,” I called after him. He paused in his flight like a hummingbird. “Where exactly did you find the comb?”

  “It was on the table beneath the looking glass,” said he. “Right in plain sight. Don’t know how she missed it.”

  While everyone else worked on the problem of reuniting the two upset ladies, I went inside the wagon and stared at the little table. It was an ordinary thing, with ordinary things upon it: a pot of mustard, some scraps of paper, a quill, a jar of ink, and a dish of skin cream made of goose fat. It would be difficult to miss something such as a hair comb in that assortment.

  Then my eye fell upon the looking glass that hung on the bulkhead above it. A chill crept over me. It was a common sort of mirror of the type tinkers sell, a circle of glass backed with silver and framed in wood. There wasn’t anything to cause me unease. But when I looked into it and saw my reflection there, I had the distinct feeling that something was inside it, peering through the eyes of my image, regarding me with malevolent will.

  Chapter 23

  THE FELL REFLECTION

  AT LAST we were one day’s march away from a market town where we might stage our inaugural performance of Puggle’s Spectacular. It was the evening of that penultimate night when things reached a head with Lily, and a bizarre discovery was made.

  Lily and Morgana weren’t speaking to each other since the disagreement of the previous afternoon. I was unable to account for Lily’s behavior.

  Morgana climbed up beside me during the last march of the day, still careful not to let her skirts touch me. For a while she stared at her fingers, absentmindedly snapping them now and again, each time sending sparks whirling through the air.

  I was about to break the silence (or rather, the clop of hooves, the creak of the wagon frame, the croak of the harness, the rattle of the wheels, and the squeaking of the axles) when she began to speak, very quietly so that she should not be overheard from within.

  “What Lily said is true,” she began. “I have been selfish, and the plight of my people has come second to my own interests.”

  My first instinct was to babble denials, to say her interests were the interests of her people, and that she was making great sacrifices and so on. But that’s not what I said.

  “I cannot tell that, for I know nothing of your people, but what you do next is what matters most,” is what came out when I spoke.

  “You understand me well, Kit,” she said, which was not at all what I’d expected. I thought I’d made an appalling blunder.

  “Well, I mean—”

  “I feel as if my entire life has been a mistake until now, or founded on one. I have drifted like a cypril leaf upon a stream, floating along on privilege and obligation. Did you know, until I met Lily, I’d never had a friend? Never in all my decades. And now that I have one, I’m neglecting the vital affairs of Faerie because we’ve had a tiff.”

  “If you’ve never had a friend, then you know not what happens between them,” I said.

  “Do they often fight?”

  “Sometimes. And sometimes not. It is a matter of the mutual characters of the friends, and thus each friendship is as different as it is alike, the same as people.”

  “I’m only just learning people. Lily broke my heart into two pieces when she said those things, because they were cruel, and spiteful, and true. Now I scarcely understand whether we’re still friends, or i
f we’re not. And I don’t understand how Lily seems to have changed so! Or is it me? Have I changed in ways of which I am unaware? Do people change without knowing it?”

  “People become who they are without knowing they do so. After that, when we change we usually have some sense of it. That’s what puzzles me. This isn’t the Lily I know. She’s not herself. And yet she seems altogether unaware of it.”

  “So it’s not entirely me?” Morgana said, with a pathetic note of hope in her voice.

  “You’re doing very well—for a princess,” I said. That was the wrong thing to say.

  Morgana stared at me awhile with her mouth pursed, then ducked back inside the wagon without another word. I cursed myself: What right had I to tell anyone else about friendship? I clearly hadn’t any idea how it was done. At least Midnight liked me.

  * * *

  We camped in a rather sinister gorge that night, for we had heard the faraway cry of a gryphon not long after Morgana stopped speaking to me. The walls of the gorge overhung the cart track at the bottom, and there were tall trees there. These would hinder attack from above. Our stopping-place was near the far end of the gorge, so if there was pursuit on foot we might escape that way. Still, it was not an ideal place to stop, and certainly it was an unhappy vale. The trees were gaunt and narrow, the stone walls of the gorge blackened with mildew and perpetually damp. There was no undergrowth, only moss. I doubted the sun shone into that place for more than an hour or two in the day.

  Nightfall came with a deep darkness. We elected not to light a fire, as the walls of the gorge would light up and make our resting-place uncommonly visible, but stumbled about with bits of candle in our hands. The feyín had no trouble at all—they could see fairly well at night to begin with, but in addition, their hind ends provided them with enough light to read by, if they could read. Perhaps Willum could.

  Our agreed-upon sleeping arrangement placed the ladies in the front room with the bunks. Uncle Cornelius, Fred, and the feyín slept in the back room—the old man on the floor, the ape in a drawer, and the feyín anywhere they pleased. I slept outside on the driver’s seat.

  In practice, however, Willum slept outside the wagon, huddled inside one of the rear side lamps with his feet hanging out the door. He didn’t like either end of the vehicle to go unguarded.

  So that night, Fred went a-hunting as soon as it was dark. The rest of us, listless and uneasy, whiled away our time at trifles, eating a cold meal, each of us alone.

  When things began to happen, Uncle Cornelius was in the back compartment of the wagon, writing a memoir. Willum was sitting in his lamp, impersonating a candle. Lily was in the bunk compartment, Gruntle I knew not where. I was cleaning Midnight’s hooves by candlelight.

  A little distance away, Morgana was whispering up a nearby tree. She issued what sounded like the sort of orders one gives to couriers. She kept repeating passages as if to help someone memorize a phrase, but I couldn’t hear what she said, only the tone of her voice. I supposed she was talking to feyín—but why? Then it came to me. I knew there was a flaw in the bee-mail system! Bees are a diurnal species. No messages at night!

  I was just finishing up the third hoof when the door of the wagon swung open, spilling light across the ground. Lily was in the doorway.

  “Morgana,” said she. “My sweet Morgana. How I’ve missed your company. Come, I wish to give you a gift. To make up for my terrible behavior.”

  Morgana turned from her whispering. She was as surprised as I.

  “A gift? I desire only to enjoy your good opinion. That is gift enough,” she said, and delivered one last command to whomever was in the branches of the tree. She stepped into the tail of the light from the door, so that it seemed to form a glowing pathway between them.

  “Oh please, dear,” Lily implored. “’Tis human to give presents as tokens of our love.”

  “Only,” said Morgana, “if I may give you a present in return.”

  Given Morgana’s mood, it wouldn’t have surprised me if she’d handed Lily a purse of plenty—and left her on a moor somewhere, wealthy and alone. I’d altogether forgotten about Midnight’s feet, so interested was I in this turn of events.

  “We shall exchange tokens of our affection, then. And you’ll forgive me if you will, and as I pray,” Lily said. Morgana hesitated only a moment, then walked up the illuminated path to the door and mounted the steps. The door clapped shut behind her, the light was snipped off, and I stood there by the glow of my tallow wondering what on earth had come over Lily of late. She seemed to swing between extremes, like a pendulum.

  I’d returned to Midnight’s hooves, and was describing features of tomorrow’s performance to him, when I heard a distinct thump from the wagon.

  “The deuce!” cried Uncle Cornelius from within his compartment.

  Then there was a scream of terror, and I ran like blazes for the door.

  The latch was locked. I could not lift it. Inside the wagon there were sounds of a struggle, and the entire conveyance rocked on its frame.

  “Morgana!” I cried, and “Lily!” for good measure.

  Willum streaked around the corner of the wagon and clung to the nose of a carved sphinx aside the door, to which I was now applying my shoulder.

  “Back door is sealed,” he panted. “None of my comprimaunts will open it!”

  “Try the windows,” said I, for they were too small to admit me, but ample for him.

  “Sealed as well. The entire boat’s been hexed!”

  “Gruntle?”

  “He was with me. He’s trying to find a way in from underneath.”

  “We simply must get in,” I cried, for the sounds of struggle were renewed. I distinctly heard Morgana shouting in pain, and Lily’s voice was unrecognizable, growling and cursing.

  Just then, who should come hurtling out of the darkness but Fred, a pheasant in his jaws.

  Without breaking his four-legged stride, he spat the bird out, flung himself into the air, and crashed through the side-window like a cliff-diver plunging into a puddle.

  There was a tremendous noise within, a chorus of shrill screams, and a moment later the latch was lifted and I nearly tore the door from its hinges in my frenzy to gain entrance to the compartment.

  Fred threw himself outside with as much haste as I threw myself inside, and in a trice I saw why. Evil had entered our snug refuge.

  There was chaos within. Every article of furniture had been overturned and the floor was strewn with wreckage. Lily and Morgana were struggling desperately. Their clothes were torn and their hair awry. Lily was stretched across the floor, gripping Morgana’s ankle, trying to pull her toward the door. Morgana was at the back of the cabin, struggling with her hip against the table and her hands pressed to the bulkhead, trying to push herself away, but some force was dragging her against it. In the opening of the bulkhead leading to Cornelius’s compartment was the old gentleman himself, sprawled on the floor with the heavy curtain pulled down over him.

  In the first instant I could not understand the meaning of the tableau. But then, as Morgana twisted and fought, I saw there was something between her and the wall.

  It was a human arm.

  The limb gleamed strangely, glittering in the light of the swaying lamps. It was a woman’s arm, the fingers knotted in Morgana’s hair. A strong woman, for I saw muscles flexing beneath its shining skin, dragging Morgana inexorably toward the looking glass.

  It was this from which the arm had emerged, like a serpent slithering from a hole. I saw that the crown of Morgana’s head was only a handsbreadth from the plane of the mirror, the disembodied arm drawing her into its depths. There wasn’t an instant to lose.

  I clambered over Lily’s prostrate form and grabbed Morgana’s hair, closer to her head than the mirror-surfaced hand. I felt the fingers of it, hard and cold. Like glass. With all my strength, I pulled. Morgana cried out, and it wrenched my heart to hear her pain. But the strength of that arm was incredible.

  “Will
um!” cried I. “Can you enter?”

  “I cannot,” he shouted. “The caprizel still holds!”

  There had to be another way. “Lily! Find the scissors, or my razor. We must cut off her hair!”

  But Lily could do nothing, for she had knocked herself senseless against the corner of the stool. Morgana writhed like a speared fish, I strained against the apparition in the looking glass to no avail, and nothing seemed possible.

  But then—it was a looking glass. Unless there was some mirrored creature on the other side of the bulkhead, reaching through, then the magical effect ended at the silver behind the glass. I dared free one hand from Morgana’s hair and grasped the frame of the looking glass. It was perfectly free, attached only by a nail. I pulled it from the wall.

  In a trice, the mighty strength in the arm was rendered useless; without the bulkhead to anchor it, it hung from Morgana’s head uselessly. Still clinging to the frame of the glass, I carried the thing to the door, with Morgana in tow behind me. Now those uncanny fingers were crawling up through her hair, trying to reach her head—to crush it, or for what purpose, I knew not. Snatching up a fragment of porcelain from a broken teacup, I slashed at the princess’s hair, chopping away at it in the very narrow space between scalp and mirrored fingers. I could see my own reflection in the hand, distorted and flung back in countless facets.

  Then it was free. There was a painful popping sound as I tore the remaining strands from Morgana’s head, and I had the looking glass in my hands with the arm projecting from it. Morgana fell back across Lily, clutching her injured scalp, her strength gone.

  I dashed down the steps of the wagon. The shining hand was clutching at me now. For an instant, I looked into the glass and saw a green face glaring out from behind the arm. It was a woman’s face, with flaming red hair that leapt up, and across one eye was strapped a patch of black leather. Such hatred I saw in the remaining eye! It froze my blood.

  I flung the grotesque object into the darkness. It sparkled as it flew, the arm flailing, fingers outstretched. I saw black clumps of Morgana’s hair fluttering along behind it.