Gabriel Finley and the Lord of Air and Darkness

by George Hagen

  “Gabriel, I’m so sorry,” she whispered quietly, as a hot tear rolled down her cheek.

  “He’ll change his mind soon enough and tell us all we need to free Corax,” chirped the robin.

  “But he doesn’t know anything,” Abby wept. “I promise.” She wiped her cheeks with her pajama sleeve.

  “Oh, calm down,” said Hookeye. “Your friend will come to no harm.”

  Abby glared bitterly at the phantom. “It’s a store,” she replied. “He could be sold by that creepy man.”

  “Not if he keeps his mouth shut,” replied Hookeye. “Nobody wants a silent raven.”

  She turned to Snitcher. “You know that he’ll never help you, don’t you?”

  “I’ll give him a week,” replied the robin.

  “And then what?” asked Abby.

  But Snitcher had already flown away.

  A bell on the shop door tinkled as its owner, Leon Pleshette, entered. His vast, egglike head was perched on a small, spindly frame. Mr. Pleshette pursed his lips into a mousy sneer as he took off a creased raincoat with loose buttons and hung it on a hook. He donned a green eyeshade and replaced his usual spectacles with a special pair equipped with extra lenses on little extensions.

  Cries, hisses, squawks, and squeaks erupted from every corner of the shop. Some cages were shaped like teardrops, others like minarets, but most were rectangles and squares; some were stacked in columns, others bunched in clusters, and still others wedged between boxes. Their captives were of every type: birds, snakes, lizards, mice, hamsters, rats, and crickets. They had one thing in common: they all desperately wanted their freedom.

  You might expect the owner of so many animals to be a curious and generous fellow, but Pleshette was a tyrant. As the noises grew louder, the shopkeeper snapped, “Silence, or you’ll all go hungry!”

  The cries hushed to whimpers, but the man waited until they were absolutely silent before he put on a rumpled leather apron and flipped the sign on the door to say OPEN.

  Up in the highest rafter—impossible to see amid the disorderly jumble—was the raven-shaped cage.

  Gabriel and Paladin had been talking all night about how to escape.

  Perhaps we should tell him that we’re here? suggested Paladin.

  Don’t you remember the last time we visited him? Gabriel replied. He’s incredibly greedy; he’d much rather sell you than set you free.

  What if he did sell us? Wouldn’t that be better than being here?

  We’re trapped in a cage sealed with magic, Gabriel reminded Paladin. If a stranger bought us from Pleshette, we could be stuck inside it forever.

  Okay. In that case, I don’t want to be sold, agreed Paladin. But how do we escape?

  Just then, there was a cry from below.

  “Punch! Where are you?” shouted Pleshette.

  The shopkeeper was weaving through the cluttered shop, peering inside boxes and under baskets. “It’s feeding time, Punch!”

  Pleshette stopped at a large brass urn and rapped it with his knuckles. When a high-pitched screech replied, he opened the lid. “Come out, you little rascal.”

  A small capuchin monkey with a fierce white face and a furry black body popped out. He spat on his hands and arranged the tuft of hair above his forehead into a curl, then glared furiously at Pleshette.

  “I was sleeping!” the monkey replied in a shrill jabber. “Why must I be the one to feed them?”

  A talking monkey? remarked Gabriel.

  It doesn’t surprise me, Paladin replied. This is a shop full of unusual things, remember?

  The storekeeper grunted at the monkey. “I can’t very well go climbing up there, can I? Get on with it or you’ll get no breakfast.”

  Grumbling, the monkey sprang from the urn to a shelf, where he slung a feed bag over his shoulder and grabbed a tiny wooden gavel. Then he leaped up to the cage of a cockatoo, struck the bars with a gleeful rat-a-tat-tat, and flung out a handful of gray pellets.

  The elegant white bird dodged the angry rain of food.

  “Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!” Punch murmured in a high, careless tone. “You’re all stupid. That’s why you’re here!” He giggled and swung to the next cage.

  Using his tail to anchor himself, the monkey made his way up the tower of cages, leering at mice, rats, snakes, and birds of all sizes, flinging pellets of food into each cage, then striking the bars with his gavel. “Wake up, stupid! Not one of you is as smart as Punch!”

  When Punch reached the ceiling, he swung deftly from one hanging cage to the next, tossing birdseed and rattling each cage till its inhabitant cowered and shrank from him.

  What a little monster, said Gabriel.

  What’s he going to do when he sees us? asked Paladin.

  When the monkey had worked his way to the top rafters, he stopped suddenly. His eyes narrowed as he examined the peculiar cage with its network of rivets and metal fastenings. He cocked his head with curiosity.

  “A raven? Ravens are supposed to be very intelligent,” said Punch.

  “We are,” Paladin answered.

  The monkey smirked. “Okay, stupid, let’s see what you can do. I’ve heard your kind loves riddles. Answer me this:

  “I’m the ruler of you all—

  Feather, bubble, cannonball.

  That which rises shall soon fall.

  None on earth resist my call.”

  Punch revealed a cunning smile. “What am I?”

  “Feather, bubble, cannonball,” thought Paladin. Those are odd choices. They all fall through the air differently.

  This riddle is about things that fall, added Gabriel. “None on earth resist my call.”…Well, why does everything on earth fall?

  “This ruler’s name must be…gravity!” said Paladin.

  Punch wrinkled his nose and frowned. “Who told you?” he snapped, glaring at the other creatures. “One of you? Speak up!”

  “No one told me,” Paladin replied. “I solved it.”

  “Liar!” The monkey began striking the cage with the gavel. “Liar, liar, liar! No food for you, liar!”

  “What are you doing up there, Punch?” shouted Pleshette. “Don’t you want your breakfast?”

  The monkey spun the cage with a last whack of the gavel. He swung down to the counter and joined Pleshette, who handed him a banana.

  How long do you think we’ll last before we starve to death? wondered Paladin.

  The cage trembled as the boy and the raven imagined this bleak ending to their lives.

  —

  The next morning, Trudy Baskin came downstairs to find Adam, Aunt Jaz, Pamela, Somes, and Abby at the breakfast table. “Goodness,” she said with surprise. “So many visitors on a school day.”

  “Oh, it’s okay, Mom,” said Pamela. “I invited them here for popovers.”

  Trudy looked puzzled. “You made popovers? They’re not easy. In fact, they’re quite…”

  Pamela pointed to the stove, where steam rose in little curlicues from a cluster of golden pastries.

  “Help yourself,” said Mr. Finley.

  “No time,” said Trudy. “Pamela, I have a dentist appointment, so I won’t be riding with you on the train.”

  But she didn’t leave without noticing Gabriel’s absence. “Where is he?” she asked.

  “Sick,” said Abby. “Brushing his teeth,” said Pamela. “In the shower,” said Somes, all three at the same time.

  They shared a nervous glance; then Pamela said, “Gabriel’s sick, and he’s brushing his teeth while he takes a shower….”

  “Annoying boy,” said Trudy. She threw on her coat. “Don’t be late for school, dear!”

  “Sure, Mom,” said Pamela.

  After Trudy’s exit, the stove gave a hiss of relief. Its metal arm sprang to the oven door to rescue a fresh batch of popovers, which it dropped with a clatter on the griddle.

  “So you saw the cage inside Pleshette’s shop?” said Mr. Finley, focusing his gaze on Abby.

  “Yes, and the robin
and the valraven flew off after that,” Abby replied.

  “Snitcher?” said Mr. Finley. “The robin who wears the torc?”

  “Right, with Corax inside it telling him what to do,” added Somes.

  Mr. Finley gave a deep sigh. “Let me just go over what we know so far. People who disappear through the torc’s magic are split, soul from body. The body is trapped in some sort of small vessel or rune, surrounded by a ring of fire. And these vessels lie in a place called the Chamber of Runes?”

  “Exactly,” said Abby. “That’s everything the stork told Gabriel.”

  “But I thought there was something else,” said Pamela. “I can’t remember….”

  “Where is this chamber?” said Mr. Finley.

  “The sparrows told Paladin it was deep underground, somewhere east of Aviopolis,” said Pamela.

  “But Corax doesn’t know that, because Gabriel wouldn’t tell,” said Abby.

  “Corax must be quite confident that Pleshette won’t notice the extra cage,” said Mr. Finley. “If Pleshette had a clue what Gabriel has found out, you can be sure he would strike a deal with Corax. We must hope that the shopkeeper remains ignorant about the cage.”

  “The poor things,” fretted Aunt Jaz. “To be trapped inside such an awful place.”

  “I’m going to go over there right now to talk to Pleshette,” said Mr. Finley.

  “Can I come?” asked Pamela.

  “Me too?” said Abby and Somes quickly.

  Adam folded his hands. “I believe you’re the best friends anyone could have,” he replied. “But school comes first. Off you go!”

  —

  At Pleshette’s shop, a steady stream of customers had been coming in to browse his wares. They studied the dozens of unusual cages hanging overhead, the jars of powders and liquids, and the peculiar amulets and stones in the glass display beneath his cash register. Leon Pleshette ignored most of them. He studied his newspaper or filled in the crossword puzzle, answering their occasional questions with a sniff or a sneer, or an irritable retort like “Get out!”

  Gabriel wasn’t surprised to see most visitors leave without buying anything, although he wondered how Pleshette stayed in business.

  The answer arrived when a shady-looking fellow in an overcoat entered. Looking around suspiciously, he said, “I’m trying to find…Obedience Powder.”

  Pleshette dropped his paper, flipped the sign on the door to CLOSED, and greeted his visitor with unusual courtesy. “Very good, sir,” he said. “For children or adults?”

  The man cast another glance around. “What’s the difference?”

  “For children it comes in lemonade flavor. Mixed with water, it’ll make them do anything you say for about an hour,” said Pleshette. “Good for dentists and nervous babysitters. Of course, if you need it for adults, I have coffee flavor. My best customers are used-car dealers. You can sell any junkyard wreck to a customer who drinks this. Finally, I have flavorless Obedience Powder, which costs a bit more.”

  “Flavorless?”

  “Mix it in cookie batter, or sprinkle on a cracker, or stir into the water dispenser. Serve it to supermarket customers and tell them to buy all the rotting fruit and out-of-date meat. Very popular at flea markets for selling odd socks, shirts that don’t fit, dud lightbulbs, dead batteries, broken radios. Pays for itself in savings!”

  After the customer left with three boxes of flavorless Obedience Powder, there were several others who came in—each shiftier and more peculiar than the last.

  An elderly woman wearing intensely dark mascara, large brass hoop earrings, and a shawl asked for Clairvoyance Candies. She bought four bags. Pleshette handed her a receipt with a smile.

  “Until next month, Madame Valentino?”

  Popping a candy into her mouth, Madame Valentino widened her eyes and shook her head. “No, my dear. I predict we shall soon pass each other on Bleecker Street on a dark and stormy night.”

  Pleshette didn’t seem convinced, but he nodded. “Very well, then.”

  Do you think they really work? Paladin wondered.

  As well as Magic 8-Balls and rabbit’s feet and stuff like that, I bet, Gabriel replied. I doubt anything Pleshette sells can be trusted.

  Two men entered the shop, looking for a creature called a Lottery Lizard.

  Mr. Pleshette ordered Punch to retrieve a cage containing a small orange lizard with a slithering tongue and bulbous black eyes.

  “Your chances of winning the grand prize in a lottery are one in thirteen million,” said Pleshette. “But with my little friend here, you’ll be tomorrow’s winner!”

  He laid a blank lottery ticket on the counter and placed the lizard on top of it. The creature darted about the card, marking holes in some of the numbers with the tip of one claw. When it had picked six numbers, Pleshette held up the card to show the two men.

  One man leaned forward to read the numbers, but Pleshette flipped the card so that they couldn’t be seen. “Not so fast,” he said. “My Lottery Lizards are never wrong, and I’m not in this for my health. Little Rufus here is worth five thousand dollars at least.”

  Paladin and Gabriel listened to the customers haggle about the price.

  I doubt those lizards work, remarked Gabriel. If they did, Pleshette could just close his shop and make all the money he wants playing the lottery. I bet those customers come back to complain and he makes some excuse about the lizard not being fed properly.

  After the deal was done, Pleshette saw his customers to the door just as a new one entered. Bearded, in a corduroy jacket, he had a scholarly appearance. “Good morning,” he said. “I’m looking for something very unusual. It’s a raven in a metal cage about this size….”

  Paladin! said Gabriel with surprise. That sounds like my dad.

  Up in the rafters, the raven peered through the eyeholes of his wire prison, trembling with hope.

  Adam Finley gestured with his hands, to show the size of the cage. Pleshette looked puzzled. “I have nothing like that here.”

  “You haven’t even looked.”

  “Don’t need to,” said Pleshette. “I know what’s in my shop. Leave your name and number. I’ll call if one turns up.”

  Mr. Finley handed him a card, and Pleshette studied the name. “Adam Finley? I know you. You bought a stove years ago—the one that made potions. A very valuable piece of—”

  “Listen, Pleshette,” Mr. Finley interrupted. “I’ll trade you the stove for the raven. Look for him. Now!”

  Pleshette folded his arms. “I know what I have. And I don’t have it.”

  Frustrated, Mr. Finley peered up at the jumble of items hanging from the ceiling. “Paladin!” he cried. “I’ve come to set you free!”

  “I’m here!” answered Paladin.

  But the moment the raven spoke, twenty other birds joined in, hoping to be rescued.

  “I’m here!” repeated five mynah birds.

  “I’m here! I’m here!” cried a dozen budgies and parakeets.

  “I’m here! I’m here! I’m here!” cried the African gray parrots, the blue-fronted Amazons, and the Indian ringnecks. Each bird cried louder than the one before.

  Paladin tried again. “No, I mean, I’m Paladin!”

  “No, I’m Paladin!” repeated the budgies.

  “I’m Paladin!” mimicked the Quaker parakeets.

  “No, I’m Paladin!” added a cockatoo, not to be outdone.

  “Paladin, Paladin, Paladin!” cried a king parrot. And to make it even more confusing, a macaw followed this by emitting a piercing shriek that rattled everybody’s ears.

  As every creature in the shop shrieked for Mr. Finley’s attention, Pleshette turned crimson with rage. “Punch!” he shouted.

  The monkey sprang up the tower of cages, striking as many of them as he could with his gavel. When he got to the ceiling, he flipped the gavel around and poked its handle through the wires of Paladin’s cage, jabbing the raven painfully in the chest.

  “Don’t be stupid
, stupid, stupid,” he warned.

  “You have a lot of unhappy creatures,” Mr. Finley told Pleshette.

  “Oh, they just like attention.” Pleshette’s eyes probed his visitor. “This raven must be exceedingly valuable to you, Mr. Finley. Why, I wonder?”

  “It’s a family matter,” Adam replied as he scrutinized each cage hanging above—and each desperate captive. But though Abby had described the unusual cage and its location near the ceiling, he couldn’t see past the junk strung from the rafters. In fact, it seemed that the shopkeeper disposed of his garbage by hanging it up rather than discarding it.

  Disappointed, Adam turned to Pleshette. “Yes, he is exceedingly valuable. I advise you to check your stock and be sure to call me immediately when you locate him.”

  Pleshette tucked the card into his pocket. “Certainly. A raven called Paladin?”

  “Yes.”

  The moment Mr. Finley was out the door, Pleshette stared up into the rafters and began counting the cages.

  “Eighteen, nineteen, twenty…”

  The mischievous monkey slowly lowered the gavel from Paladin’s neck. “ ‘Exceedingly valuable,’ ” he repeated in a whisper. “What can Punch get for Paladin, I wonder?”

  Peering down at his master, the mischievous monkey began interrupting the shopkeeper’s tally with wrong numbers.

  “Seventeen.”

  “Fifteen!”

  “Eighteen.”

  “Sixteen!”

  Pleshette threw up his hands. “How am I supposed to count my cages with you babbling away? Is it possible I’ve a raven that I don’t know about?”

  Punch folded one little hand beneath his chin with artful innocence. “Oh no, no ravens up here.”

  “I didn’t think so,” sighed Pleshette. “Just another person trying to waste my time.”

  The monkey glanced slyly at his master and whispered softly, “Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

  Trudy prepared a meal that evening with a very unappetizing name: turkey gizzard casserole. While she crashed pots and pans together in the kitchen, Mr. Finley had a serious conversation with Abby, Pamela, and Somes in his study.

  “I didn’t see the cage,” he said. “And Pleshette doesn’t seem to know he has it. The shop is a chaotic mess.”