Elspeth needed no more convincing that this Krool fellow was a nasty piece of work and now wanted more than ever to find her way out of this dreadful place.
“Going to the castle would be foolhardy,” said Dumpty. “Of course, you’re more than welcome to stay with us until Jack and Jill are released from prison.”
“And when will that be?” asked Elspeth.
Dumpty rubbed his chin and looked at Bo-Peep. “The word on the street from Little Robin Redbreast is that they’ve been given life sentences. But with good behavior, you never know.”
Elspeth screamed and drew her foot back with the intention of kicking a small rock but pulled up just short, being that she was in no mood to be yelled at by gravel just now. “This is ridiculous. If the only way for me to get home is to go to the castle, then I insist I be taken there this minute.”
Dumpty sighed, and Bo-Peep shrugged. “Follow me,” he said.
With Bo-Peep trailing behind them, her stick upon her shoulder, and Fergus the grammar owl keeping pace from above, Dumpty escorted Elspeth down the same path Elspeth had been on but in the opposite direction.
“Is this the way to the castle?” asked Elspeth suspiciously after about ten minutes of walking. “It doesn’t look like a road that would lead to a castle.”
“Patience, child,” said Dumpty.
Elspeth tried her best to muster up some of this thing called patience, and the group trudged on in silence until Dumpty stopped abruptly and turned to address a large willow tree. “Good morning, Manuel,” said Dumpty.
“Hola, Señor Dumpty,” the willow tree acknowledged in a slow, sleepy voice.
“If you don’t mind,” said Dumpty. He made a sweeping motion with his hand, from left to right.
“No problemo,” replied Manuel.
Manuel pulled back his branches to reveal a large clearing in the forest. Peering in through the newly created passageway, Elspeth was surprised to find an encampment. Set up around the perimeter of the glade were rows and rows of tents, all of different sizes and in varying states of disrepair, patched with swatches of mismatched cloth. In the middle of the clearing was a campfire and, hanging above that fire, an iron pot, giving off a thick steam, which mingled with smoke from the fire, the mixture thinning as it wafted up above the treetops.
“You said you were taking me to the castle,” Elspeth sniped.
“I said no such thing,” Dumpty replied. “I merely said, ‘Follow me,’ and you did. And here we are.”
“And where’s here?” Elspeth demanded.
“We call it the suburbs,” said Bo-Peep.
“Boy, that’s a stretch,” said Elspeth. “Why would anyone choose to live here?”
“We’re not here by choice, I assure you,” said Dumpty. “We were forced here years ago when we were banished from our former home of Banbury Cross.” He then motioned with his hand again. “Ladies?”
Elspeth stepped into the glade, and Bo-Peep followed. Never before had Elspeth been witness to such poverty and misery, and for a moment she just stood and stared at the downtrodden residents of the encampment. There were hundreds of them wandering about listlessly or sitting on large rocks or tree stumps, their heads in their hands, their faces drawn and despondent.
But what Elspeth noticed most was not the look of any one thing or of any one person, but the smell of everything. “What is that awful stench?” she asked.
Dumpty sniffed at the air. He looked at Bo-Peep, and the two exchanged a quizzical shrug. Though Elspeth found it unbearable, apparently Dumpty and Bo-Peep had become used to it, like people who live near a paper mill or downwind of an egg salad factory. “Could be the peas porridge, I suppose,” said Dumpty.
For the record, he was partially correct. The smell was a putrid combination of peas porridge in the pot, nine days old, and the odor one might expect from a large group of people who, for a week and a half, have eaten nothing but legumes. Though food had been in short supply for years, a recent drought had taken the problem to an increasingly desperate level.
“Would you care for a bowl?” asked Dumpty, as required by his fine English upbringing.
“Goodness, no,” said Elspeth with a scornful sneer.
Turning her nose away from the smell, she spied to her right, sitting on a log and rocking rhythmically back and forth, an oversize dinner plate staring off into nowhere while making a steady humming noise from deep down in its throat.
Elspeth put her hand to the side of her mouth, leaned toward Bo-Peep, and whispered, “Is that . . . ?”
“The Dish,” Bo-Peep said with an empathetic shake of her head.
“What’s wrong with him?” said Elspeth, still almost whispering.
“We’re not sure, really,” said Bo-Peep. “All we know is that he once resided in the castle and worked in the kitchen. One day last month, he ran away with the Spoon. As to why, he’s far too traumatized to talk about it.”
“And what did the Spoon have to say?”
“Don’t know,” said Dumpty. “The Spoon speaks only Portuguese. When he speaks at all, that is. He’s been equally affected, I’m afraid. It’s likely we may never find out what happened to those poor chaps. And that’s why I’ve brought you here. To show you what might become of you if you insist upon going to the castle.”
“You’re wasting your time, because I’m going to the castle irregardless,” said Elspeth.
“Regardless,” came that deep voice from above. “Irregardless is not a word.”
Elspeth looked up to find Fergus sitting on a branch, a look of self-satisfaction on his flat face. “Fine,” she said. “I’m going to the castle regardless. After all, I really don’t have much of a choice, do I? If you think I’m going to hang out here with you pathetic losers for the rest of my life, you’re sadly mistaken.”
The sting of the insult registered briefly on Dumpty’s scarred face. “We may be pathetic losers, as you so indelicately put it,” he replied, “but at least we’re all still alive, which is more than I can say for a certain four and twenty blackbirds, who refused to heed my warning about traveling to the castle and were, as a result, baked in a pie.”
“Hey, what’s that all about, anyway?” asked Elspeth. “Seriously, who bakes blackbirds in a pie?”
“Someone who really hates blackbirds, I suppose,” offered Bo-Peep.
“Or someone who really loves blackbirds,” said Dumpty, unaware that he was rubbing his empty belly as he spoke. “In a rich gravy, covered with a flaky crust.” It took a very loud and very sharp and very gravelly voice calling his name to snap Dumpty out of his pie-themed fantasy.
“All right, Dumpty,” said the middle-aged man, who had shuffled up with the aid of a gnarled walking stick. Equally gnarled was the man himself, his arms and legs seemingly double-, or perhaps triple- or quadruple-jointed, bending in ways and in places that human limbs normally refuse to. “When are we going to get some decent food around here?” In the man’s non-walking-stick hand was a bowl of the same sloppy peas that bubbled away in the pot just a few yards away. The man’s individual portion emitted no steam because, after all, though some like it hot, and some like it in the pot nine days old, there are also those who prefer it cold.
“My cat won’t even eat this garbage,” he said and hurled the bowl to the ground. A cat with arms and legs every bit as crooked as the man’s proved him quite wrong by quickly running over and scarfing it down, because down is the direction in which things are generally scarfed.
“I’m sorry,” said Dumpty. “But I’m not sure what you would expect me to do about it.”
“I expect you to do whatever it takes to get us something decent to eat,” groused the Crooked Man. “After all, you are the mayor of this dump.”
“Only because no one else would take the job,” Dumpty snapped back. “And I’m doing the best I can. These are difficult times for all of us.”
The Crooked Man’s eyes narrowed, and a sneer revealed yellowing teeth. “For all of us? I notice
that you don’t appear to have lost any weight.”
“Just what are you implying?” said Dumpty with barely restrained outrage.
“You know exactly what I’m implying,” snapped the Crooked Man. “Good day, sir!” With an abbreviated snort and a quick and aggressive tip of his hat, the man and his crooked cat shuffled away.
“So that’s the Crooked Man who walked a crooked mile,” remarked Elspeth. “How did he get all . . . you know?” Elspeth contorted her limbs until she resembled an Egyptian hieroglyph.
“Little advice,” said Dumpty. “When walking a crooked mile—or any other kind of mile, for that matter—never count on the king’s carriage to stop at a crosswalk.”
It appeared that the Crooked Man amounted to one more victim of Krool’s complete disregard for others. He was also, as Elspeth would soon discover, not the only resident of the suburbs to take issue with the dwindling food supply. There was one to whom the lack of quantity and variety was not only of nutritional concern, but was also, as he saw it, a matter of life and death.
“Yo, Dumpty!”
Elspeth was surprised (but not as surprised as she might have expected) to see what appeared to be an enormous wheel of cheese standing nearly the height of her chin and rolling in her direction.
“Hey, man, the Cheese needs to have a word with you,” said the Cheese, rolling right past Elspeth and Bo-Peep as though they didn’t exist and stopping just inches from Dumpty.
It probably goes without saying that never before had Elspeth encountered a talking dairy product, especially one with the habit of referring to itself in the third person (or in this case, the third cheese).
“I’m putting in an official request for a personal security detail,” said the Cheese.
“Security detail?” said Dumpty.
“That’s right. Bodyguards, man. You should see the way that Crooked dude looks at the Cheese. And every time I roll past Jack Sprat’s wife, she starts drooling like a basset hound. I’m afraid to close my eyes. I haven’t slept in days. Look at me, man. The Cheese is at the end of his rope.”
“You’re being paranoid, my good man,” said Dumpty, placing a comforting hand on the Cheese, a gesture that became much less comforting when Dumpty removed the hand and casually licked it as if no one would notice.
“Hey, hey,” said the Cheese. “Did you really just do that?”
“Do what?”
“You just touched the Cheese, then licked your hand.”
“What?” said Dumpty, feigning ignorance. “Why, that’s absurd. I was merely trying to determine which direction the wind was blowing.” Dumpty raised a moistened index finger into the air.
“You see what I mean?” the Cheese said, turning to Elspeth as if the two had been previously acquainted. “People look at me, and do they see a wheel of the finest aged imported cheddar? No. They see food. I’m telling you, Dumpty, you have no idea what it’s like.”
“What do you mean I have no idea what it’s like? Of course I do. After all, I’m half egg on my mother’s side.”
“Yeah, but nobody’s gonna eat you. No offense, but look at you. You’re all . . . you know, cracked up. Now, about that security detail.”
“I’m sorry, but a private security detail is not in the budget,” said Dumpty. “Besides, I’ve got more important business to tend to. At this moment, I’m doing my best to convince this young lady that she would be foolish to attempt a journey to the castle.” He motioned toward Elspeth.
“Hey,” he said. “You look just like . . . nah. Too chubby.”
That was the closest in her life Elspeth had ever come to punching a wheel of cheese.
“I could really use your help in dissuading her,” said Dumpty.
“Oh no. No way,” said the Cheese. “I don’t get involved in other people’s business.”
“Please,” said Dumpty. “I think it’s important that we . . .”
“You heard me. The Cheese stands alone. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to stay downwind of old twisted mister and his zigzag cat before they come after me with a fork. In the meantime, if anything bad should happen to the Cheese, it’ll be on your head.”
As Elspeth watched the wheel of cheddar roll away, leaving the egg-shaped Dumpty to scratch his head, it occurred to her that if she ever found her way home again she would very much enjoy a cheese omelet.
Hey diddle diddle, Krool broke the cat’s fiddle,
The cow was bumped off by his goons.
But still to this day, no one can say
Why the Dish ran away with the Spoon.
Chapter 7
Though the Cheese proved to be as uncooperative as he was high in cholesterol, there was still no shortage of others who were perfectly willing to provide Elspeth with examples of why a trip to the castle would be ill advised.
Standing in the middle of the encampment, she listened as patiently as she could while Little Jack Horner spoke in a quavering voice of the violent encounter with Krool’s henchmen, the horror of the event still as much alive in his eyes as was the pain in his badly disfigured thumbs. It was difficult to tell which the boy found more difficult to bear: the brutal mangling of his opposable digits or the loss of that delicious Christmas pie that had to be, quite literally, torn from his hands.
“You got your thumbs broken over a stupid pie?” asked Elspeth, folding her arms across her chest. “Why didn’t you just give it to them?”
“It was plum,” said Jack, as if that should be all the explanation necessary. He gazed at the empty space before him with such longing that one might think the very pie in question was hovering in the air, just out of reach of his damaged hands. “Have you ever had freshly baked plum pie?”
“I’m much more of a cake person,” Elspeth responded. “I don’t really like fruit. Or vegetables. Especially vegetables. Though I am quite fond of candy corn.”
All that talk of fruits, vegetables, and striped, triangular candy was beginning to draw a hungry crowd.
“If only we had fresh vegetables,” said the Old Woman who lived in a shoe. “I would certainly see to it that my children did not turn their noses up at them.”
Elspeth glared at the Old Woman. “I think you’re the last person who should be bragging about parenting skills,” she snapped.
“What do you mean by that?” asked the Old Woman, who took great pride in the fact that she had managed to raise an entire brood of well-mannered children, whose only noticeable fault was that they all smelled vaguely of leather.
“What I mean is, didn’t you whip your children soundly and send them to bed? Which, I do believe, is against the law in most states.”
The Old Woman’s mouth dropped, and her face registered a look of absolute horror. “What?” she gasped. “And just where did you hear such an awful thing?”
“She’s from the Deadlands,” Dumpty explained. Then he turned to Bo-Peep and said, “Please. Enlighten the young lady.”
Bo-Peep responded by opening the book and reading aloud.
“There was an old woman who lived in a house, with her twenty-six children and one tired spouse. But they all had to move to a big, smelly shoe, when Krool razed their house to make room for a zoo.”
Bo-Peep clapped the book closed once more.
“That’s all very tragic,” Elspeth admitted. “But I don’t see how this concerns me in any way. Now, I believe you’ve wasted enough of my time. I would like to go to the castle and speak with Jack and Jill, and I would like to go now!”
It was then that Dumpty realized there was no reasoning with the child, and, having officially given up on his efforts to discourage her, he agreed to escort her as far as the edge of the forest.
Elspeth offered little in the way of good-byes to those she had met because, as far as she was concerned, she would never see them again anyway, so what would be the point? Besides, she found them all to be a bunch of sniveling, whining crybabies. If there was one thing that irritated Elspeth more than not getting her own
way, it was people who refused to stick up for themselves.
They set out on the long walk to the edge of the forest, with Dumpty leading and Elspeth following close behind. She might have walked beside him were the path wide enough to permit it. Of all the creatures she had so far met, Dumpty was the most tolerable of the bunch. In fact, Elspeth felt a sort of fondness for the man as well as a genuine concern when he abruptly stopped walking, wobbled a bit side to side, then reached out for a tree branch.
“What’s wrong?” asked Elspeth, catching up to him. “Are you okay?’
“It’s nothing,” said Dumpty. “Just my vertigo. It tends to get worse when I’m feeling anxious. Which, with this horrible drought, seems to be all the time lately. Not to worry. I’ll be fine.”
“Okay,” said Elspeth, her concern giving way to impatience. “So can we keep moving then?”
Dumpty took just a moment more before continuing on. When they arrived at a place where the path became two, Dumpty directed Elspeth to take the one on the right and cautioned her to be careful of the sinkholes.
“Sinkholes?” Elspeth replied. “You mean holes that sink? Into the ground?”
“Yes,” said Dumpty. “Some of them are quite full of lava. Torcano Alley is teeming with them.”
“What the heck is Torcano Alley?”
“It’s a wide strip of dry, flat desert between the forest and the cliffs beyond,” Dumpty explained.
“Okay. And what exactly is a torcano?”
Elspeth soon learned that a torcano was, as the name might imply, a combination of tornado and volcano—a rapidly swirling funnel cloud of ash, pumice, and lava. Reminding Elspeth that he was a spy by trade and not a geologist, Dumpty could provide no scientific explanation for these strange and randomly occurring events.
“It is the height of torcano season,” Dumpty said, “so keep your wits about you and get across the alley as quickly as you can. Once you do, you’ll find a switchback trail which will take you to the crest of the cliffs. From there, you’ll be able to see the castle, sitting in the center of Banbury Cross, just off in the distance.”
Blue in the Face Page 4
