A Peculiar Peril, page 44
“YES, I HAVE THE ALLIES LIST. AND WE ARE TRYING TO FIND THE GOLDEN SPHERE, OR WERE, SO CROWLEY CAN’T GET HIS HANDS ON IT.”
Dr. Lambshead’s expression darkened. “The Golden Sphere’s not to be trusted, for certain, my boy. Nor quests around same. Full stop. Stopping being the operative word. Chase your tail or a tale, you might say.”
“WELL, I’VE NO CHOICE NOW.”
Dr. Lambshead frowned and said, “Sometimes a hamster is a wheel. Sometimes a wheel is a rut in the road. Sometimes you should trust the voice in your head more than anyone.”
The voice in his head? Could Dr. Lambshead possibly know about that? Or was it just another figure of speech?
“AND STIMPLY? SHOULD I TRUST STIMPLY?”
“Oh, most definitely, my boy. You must trust Stimply. And Danny. And Kubin. Probably.”
How did Dr. Lambshead know about Danny? Jonathan didn’t know who Kubin was. Why should he be trusted?
“HOW DO YOU KNOW DANNY?”
“Oh, I suggested to the Order that Danny keep an eye out for you. A good egg, Danny. One of the best. Not like some of those rats at Poxforth. Those marpots. I never wanted you enrolled there, but Sarah said you’d have to deal with all that mess someday. Better off being mired in it sooner than later. Water under the bridge. You’ve all moved on. Blah blah blah. No one cares, you know? Not even the marpots. Blah blah blahppity blah.”
Was his grandfather already sliding back into dementia again? Jonathan felt a terrible panic. Too soon. He had to ask the important questions.
“WHY IS SIR WADDEL DEAD IN THE WAY STATION?”
“Hmm? Bread in the pay station? Horrible. Need scones. Bad joke. No, poor Waddel. Wrong place, right time. Right place, wrong time. Victim of the War of Order, that much is clear. But the rest is muddy. Sarah was investigating. Sarah knew there was rot at both the poxes, so to speak.”
“ROT?”
“Rot and bother.”
Dr. Lambshead of a sudden looked under the weather. Fading but not the fade. And there were two more questions Jonathan must have the answer to. If only he wasn’t too late.
He took a deep breath, asked the first one.
“WHO IS MY FATHER?”
Laid out naked, revealing more in front of Crikey than Jonathan would have liked. It felt like a secret question. One that should only be said in front of family members.
A sly but scattered look from Dr. Lambshead. “Who isn’t your father?”
“WHAT’S THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN?” Stung. He felt the sting of serious met with clever. Or incoherent.
“Remember the birdhouses,” Dr. Lambshead said, unhelpfully. “Stimply’s told you about them I hope.”
Jonathan sighed. “NO, NOT REALLY. JUST WHAT YOU SAID IN YOUR LETTER.” He didn’t know if he could ask about his father again, not if he got this same kind of response.
“Everything’s there. Stimply’s supposed to have told you everything. All the blah blah blahs.” Dr. Lambshead chuckled, staring off into space at some elusive memory.
“WELL, HE DIDN’T.” Instead, Stimply had tried to smother him in annoying telephone calls from devices that shouldn’t work.
A final murmur before sliding off into stupor: “Jonathan. You’ve started to fade. Not too bad yet. Not so anyone would notice. But … you should get that looked at, old bean. Or I could be wrong. Things tend to slip away from me these days, my dear boy.”
The lurch and the fade. Sad for his grandfather, even now so remote, so distant from him. It was and wasn’t the sadness of distress over the fate of a loved one. Something between personal and impersonal.
Overwhelmed. Overshadowed. Homesick. For Poxforth. For Robin Hood’s Bay. For Florida. Anywhere but here. Anywhere he could just be and not have to think. Or think things through.
When he’d climbed back down to the stone patio he felt drained and his voice was hoarse. Crikey was saying things at him he could barely hear.
“That’s all you’ll get out of him for now,” Crikey said. “Perhaps ever. And you cannot tell anyone he is here.”
“He’s not really here,” Jonathan said. “Not all the way.”
“Sadly true.”
“He left a note for me at the mansion. Do you think he wrote it after or before …?”
“Oh, definitely before. You needn’t worry about that. This is a recent development. Although there had been signs.”
“And his Allies List?”
“Sometime in-between if I had to hazard a guess. Having seen the list, I must admit. He wanted anyone on the list to agree to being on the list.”
“So the squirrel in Salzberg isn’t an ally?” Feeble joke.
“Oh, the squirrel’s an ally. If in Zurich. Just not the Tether Heads—they were an amateur rugby squad. Back in the day, him and his mates.”
“Thank you for taking care of him,” Jonathan said, and meant it. What an all-consuming use of resources.
“It’s the least we can do,” Crikey said. “Considering all he’s done for us. For Reggie. Saved us from discovery more than once. Helped us build the Institute building. All sorts of things about this place are down to him.”
The dread in Jonathan, talking about these mundane things. Because of the last question he dreaded to ask, had not asked his grandfather. But had to ask, no matter what the answer. No matter how cloudy Dr. Lambshead’s eyes.
Dr. Lambshead had snapped out of his nap and was looking around him in confusion, but his eyes were clear.
Jonathan thought he had enough voice left to reach up to those ancient ears. For the only other question that meant a toss.
His voice broke on it, shattered to pieces.
“IS SARAH STILL ALIVE, TOO? IS MY MOTHER ALIVE?”
The cloud across Dr. Lambshead’s face, the way his features crumbled inward, told Jonathan the answer even before the words that came down like thunder.
“No, Jonathan. I’m sorry. She died in an avalanche. Not far from here. I’m so sorry.”
* * *
Back in Jonathan’s room, staring blankly out at the meadow, radiant in the sunshine.
“Switzerland is that way,” Crikey said from behind him. “Italy there.” Pointing pointlessly. Jonathan didn’t much care. “But no one wants Comet Land as Man Land.” That low whistle of laughter.
Sometimes Crikey was still quite alien, in how he chose his moments. Or maybe he just didn’t want to acknowledge Jonathan’s grief. He found people rarely did. To be made uncomfortable.
To stop the travelogue, if nothing else, Jonathan asked, again, “Why is my grandfather so huge?”
“Well, my friend,” Crikey said, “there is no good way to put this.”
“Put it any way you like.”
“You’ve been miniaturized. When you fell through the trapdoor. That’s why it took so long. To fall, that is.”
“Oh. Is that all?”
“It’s the only way we allow humans to enter the Institute and the meadow. A magic Napoleon perfected, to get his troops across the Alps when he was out and about conquering and whatnot. But otherwise, you’d ruin everything, being so much larger than us marmots. Dr. Lambshead’s just been here so long he’s returned to normal size. As you will anyway, when you leave this place.”
A lark. A dream.
Odd, how it seemed the least important thing.
Of all the things now bouncing around his skull.
Chapter Fifty-One
MARMOT CARPET, POUCH AND RELEASE
“All Crowleys and Wretches shall be baked into an enormous pie that is deliberately overcooked and burned beyond recognition hey nonny nonny, yeah! All Crowleys and Wretches shall be dropped into a pit and allowed to fester and fester until they ferment beyond our torment, hey nonny nonny, yeah! All Crowleys and Wretches shall be shoved into an airtight container and dumped in a deep lake, there to drown, hey nonny nonny, yeah!”
—The Speck’s decree, as related to Ruth Less, never official or issued
Ruth Less wondered if stinky shiny Crowley had dressed in yet another bear’s body in her honor. Was this a naming day? Or perhaps a group-devouring day in their culture.
After losing the last one, he could easily have gotten a worse body, especially given Wretch’s mood. But, then, Ruth Less imagined Wretch was very busy these days and it required less thought just to find another bear, which were both plentiful and delicious. If Wretch didn’t want her tempted to eat Crowley, then he should give Crowley a gross body instead, like a giant spider body or Wretch’s own.
Crammed on top of the war elephant, on the rickety, half-smashed platform, all remains of the grand piano gone. Which Ruth Less knew had been tracked back to the Golden Sphere, which had required Wretch to work up some spells to cloak the origin of his own rabid chipmunks with Crowley faces. Now the grand pianos would drop miles away, on the head of an effigy of Crowley riding atop a scale model of the war elephant.
Crowley held her beloved Speck, standing beside Wretch, the slow one they called No-Name, and a thing made of dead leaves that was called Mange—Ruth Less believed she did smell a faint reek of group-devouring. But Wretch had said it was just a normal meeting, so she did not start the group-devouring. That would not be polite. She would wait for someone else to start, and follow suit if so. After all, this was not her world. Or her meeting.
Wretch was a huge pair of eyes on the underside of a fleshy black umbrella shielding them from the terrible weather, which included lightning and large hail-rocks. Ruth Less would’ve preferred to absorb the hail-water through her skin as on her own world, but apparently here this would be rude, too. So she just listened to the sound of stones rattling off Wretch’s hard exterior.
Not much about this place made sense, and with each day she felt Wretch made less sense, too. Heady had said many things about Wretch that Ruth Less was still mulling. (Mulling was a kind of art among her species. It might take several mulls before determining a course of action. The best mull was a mulled mull and not a hasty mull.)
Nor did Ruth Less much enjoy the shouting, although she joined in, mimicking what she heard.
“What in all the hells! … How can this be? This must be wrong. The puddle lies! The puddle lies! The puddle lies!”
Of course the puddle lies. A puddle cannot stand. This was what Heady would’ve called logic. But when Ruth Less sent that thought the Speck’s way, through the glass that trapped it, the Speck just snickered in her mind.
Oh, Ruth Less. You are droll.
Drool?
“Droll” means … never mind.
Comet Man drools fire, but is never droll.
The Comet Man is very earnest, it’s true. How do you know him?
Ruth Less projected an image of their meeting into the Speck’s mind.
Ah. That is terribly devilish of you.
She knew what “devilish” was and disapproved, sent a mental image to Speck of Speck with tiny horns and a tail.
Speck snickered.
Meantime, Wretch was telling her to shut up and they were all looking with horrible fascination at a small puddle that showed an image of another place.
At first, Ruth Less could not tell what the puddle showed, although, most boringly, they had all stared at circles of water back in Notre Dame cathedral, too. If only they’d asked they could’ve found some of the same pictures inside her pouch. But they never asked. She didn’t even think they knew about her pouch or all the things she’d collected there since she’d grown up.
But, in time, cross-referencing with her pouch, Ruth Less realized the All-Seeing Puddle showed a shimmering wave of marmots advancing across tall grass … to the outskirts of Paris and that behind them marched a vast army of hedgehog men on roosters and deer folk and badger folk, and while some were of the normal size, many were like Ruth Less: grown huge and fearsome.
“How could this have happened?” Crowley was shouting, smacking at No-Name with his bear arms. “How could you let this happen?”
Wretch, even as a vast umbrella, seemed at a loss. “My lord, it is the old magic. No one can predict the old magic.”
Old magic?
Yes, the Speck said, the old magic. Become new again. The rise of the animals, taking back what was theirs.
They all look delicious and pouch-worthy.
The Speck just snickered again. It was a master snickerer. No one snickered better.
But it was true. The flowing carpet of marmot fur was golden and glossy. The startling hedgehog men and their dangerous roosters were glorious, although she wasn’t entirely sure yet what glorious meant.
“I’ve seen enough. Get Latrine. Get ET.”
Crowley was trying to calm himself by reaching out to the minds of the salamanders inside the war elephant. But both Speck and Ruth Less already communicated with those minds. Such as they were. Salamanders often resided somewhere far distant in their thoughts. But, still, Crowley’s hurt and anger and panic came through to Ruth Less. It had not occurred to Crowley that he could lose the actual war, just that Wretch might rule him forever.
Ruth Less didn’t enjoy looking into Crowley’s brain, even through a veil of salamander thoughts. She didn’t envy the salamanders, either. In her culture, Crowley would have been declared “Mooklarak” and exiled to a distant living island, there to be in thrombosis-chloriosis with a klorb until the condition cleared up. But there seemed no such oversight here, or undersight.
Soon, the puddle showed Latrine and ET, both of them with expressions Ruth Less could now read as less than happy. Humans didn’t have much facial expression range, so it had been easy to learn.
“The animals are at the outskirts of the city on the east,” Latrine babbled. “They’re everywhere! They’ve overrun the guard towers! They’ve woven spells so that every mecha-animal they meet dies or joins them. Some say they are liberating the animals that power them and swelling their ranks this way.”
“Counterattack!” screamed Crowley.
Ruth Less hated his screaming because there was often spit involved, and his spit on the ultraviolet spectrum was a gross black-tinged phlegm, as of something not quite alive. But not all the way dead. Perhaps when the group massacre party began, she should start with Crowley. If only they would get on with it.
“No,” Wretch said calmly. “Tell everyone to fall back, use nonmagical troops if you have to. Set the Emissaries on them, and see what effect they have. Remove all mecha-animals to the city center to protect them.”
Charlemagne, as if not to be outdone, said, “Make ’em bleed! Bleed ’em out like the meat they are. Make them be like a river of blood. Pour forges into the gap. When they come out of their holes, blast them with your hot irons. Make them beg for mercy with your mania. Stick forks into their rumps. Cut off …”
But Ruth Less lost the thread. Mange was hard to understand, and she wasn’t even sure she’d heard him right, having to supply words for the nonsense ones she was sure she was hearing. Besides, it was hard to understand him over all the outcry from the pupa in their chrysalides.
She wasn’t sure if Mange knew this, but the dead leaves coating him (some would say holding him up) were rife with moth young, soon to birth. Indeed, some of the “leaves” were actually dead moths with chrysalides clinging to them. She didn’t know what would happen when they were born, but perhaps Mange would then be nothing but naked bone.
Wretch and Crowley were arguing about what to do about the marmots, while Latrine and ET shouted from the puddle at their feet and the comforting hail smashed down upon Wretch’s exoskeleton. Mange offered advice, too, but Ruth Less didn’t bother to translate in her head anymore. It hurt too much. She preferred not to know. He was better as a surging throb of moth chrysalides than as a person. Some people were like that, she’d learned.
Ahead and behind, the other war elephants, but from the high hill they currently traversed, Ruth Less could see the city of Prague in the distance: the glint of the wall surrounding it, the golden flecks of sunlight off the fortress towers. Yes, it was sunny in Prague, if not here, and the Speck had told her the hail was a “gift” from the magicians of Prague.
“We must turn the army around and march back to Paris,” Crowley was saying.
“Impossible,” Wretch said. “Impossible.”
“Mixed-use vegetables are zoned for bears,” Mange said, or Ruth Less thought he said. “With the meat of nations, we shall prevail in the arena of the stupid. Marmot marmot marmot rooster. Hedgehog.”
Ruth Less had liked Prague, found it what Heady would’ve called “elegant but quack,” or was that “quaint”? Sometimes the Speck liked her version of language better, so she didn’t mind too much misinterpreting because the Speck’s giggle made her happy.
Less likable about Prague: the people who came up to her or followed her around. The ones who approached her she ate, pouched, or ignored, depending on criteria like if they called her “fat” or “ugly.”
The pouchable she only left in there for ten minutes or so, which in pouch-time could be as much as a year, and then she set them free, to stumble down the quack cobblestone streets and regain their balance and their lives, utterly transformed.
Ruth Less liked to think that Prague would be a different place in a year, what with all the people she’d pouched and released again. A better place. One she might like to live in, depending on the war.
The small plant woman and the tall man who followed her, Ruth Less would’ve done the same to, but the woman had an aura about her and a smell that made her a stubborn bite … and the other frightened her because she could not see to the heart of him. He had no smell. He had no taste. Did he hide them or did he truly not have a taste, a smell? She would ponder this awhile before they might meet again.
Shall I rescue you from this place, Speck? Ruth Less asked, lulled into torpor by the comforting sound of the hail. It sounded more and more as it intensified like the popping out of the Lorgororstintyrooginstwuth eggs during the sacred month of Oooooooooooe. When out of the holes in the chlorinator beasts bled the fly-babies that rose to slaughter the Babkooksnatbatchpoors. Ah, such a glorious sight, and harbinger of the sixth and final season.
Dr. Lambshead’s expression darkened. “The Golden Sphere’s not to be trusted, for certain, my boy. Nor quests around same. Full stop. Stopping being the operative word. Chase your tail or a tale, you might say.”
“WELL, I’VE NO CHOICE NOW.”
Dr. Lambshead frowned and said, “Sometimes a hamster is a wheel. Sometimes a wheel is a rut in the road. Sometimes you should trust the voice in your head more than anyone.”
The voice in his head? Could Dr. Lambshead possibly know about that? Or was it just another figure of speech?
“AND STIMPLY? SHOULD I TRUST STIMPLY?”
“Oh, most definitely, my boy. You must trust Stimply. And Danny. And Kubin. Probably.”
How did Dr. Lambshead know about Danny? Jonathan didn’t know who Kubin was. Why should he be trusted?
“HOW DO YOU KNOW DANNY?”
“Oh, I suggested to the Order that Danny keep an eye out for you. A good egg, Danny. One of the best. Not like some of those rats at Poxforth. Those marpots. I never wanted you enrolled there, but Sarah said you’d have to deal with all that mess someday. Better off being mired in it sooner than later. Water under the bridge. You’ve all moved on. Blah blah blah. No one cares, you know? Not even the marpots. Blah blah blahppity blah.”
Was his grandfather already sliding back into dementia again? Jonathan felt a terrible panic. Too soon. He had to ask the important questions.
“WHY IS SIR WADDEL DEAD IN THE WAY STATION?”
“Hmm? Bread in the pay station? Horrible. Need scones. Bad joke. No, poor Waddel. Wrong place, right time. Right place, wrong time. Victim of the War of Order, that much is clear. But the rest is muddy. Sarah was investigating. Sarah knew there was rot at both the poxes, so to speak.”
“ROT?”
“Rot and bother.”
Dr. Lambshead of a sudden looked under the weather. Fading but not the fade. And there were two more questions Jonathan must have the answer to. If only he wasn’t too late.
He took a deep breath, asked the first one.
“WHO IS MY FATHER?”
Laid out naked, revealing more in front of Crikey than Jonathan would have liked. It felt like a secret question. One that should only be said in front of family members.
A sly but scattered look from Dr. Lambshead. “Who isn’t your father?”
“WHAT’S THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN?” Stung. He felt the sting of serious met with clever. Or incoherent.
“Remember the birdhouses,” Dr. Lambshead said, unhelpfully. “Stimply’s told you about them I hope.”
Jonathan sighed. “NO, NOT REALLY. JUST WHAT YOU SAID IN YOUR LETTER.” He didn’t know if he could ask about his father again, not if he got this same kind of response.
“Everything’s there. Stimply’s supposed to have told you everything. All the blah blah blahs.” Dr. Lambshead chuckled, staring off into space at some elusive memory.
“WELL, HE DIDN’T.” Instead, Stimply had tried to smother him in annoying telephone calls from devices that shouldn’t work.
A final murmur before sliding off into stupor: “Jonathan. You’ve started to fade. Not too bad yet. Not so anyone would notice. But … you should get that looked at, old bean. Or I could be wrong. Things tend to slip away from me these days, my dear boy.”
The lurch and the fade. Sad for his grandfather, even now so remote, so distant from him. It was and wasn’t the sadness of distress over the fate of a loved one. Something between personal and impersonal.
Overwhelmed. Overshadowed. Homesick. For Poxforth. For Robin Hood’s Bay. For Florida. Anywhere but here. Anywhere he could just be and not have to think. Or think things through.
When he’d climbed back down to the stone patio he felt drained and his voice was hoarse. Crikey was saying things at him he could barely hear.
“That’s all you’ll get out of him for now,” Crikey said. “Perhaps ever. And you cannot tell anyone he is here.”
“He’s not really here,” Jonathan said. “Not all the way.”
“Sadly true.”
“He left a note for me at the mansion. Do you think he wrote it after or before …?”
“Oh, definitely before. You needn’t worry about that. This is a recent development. Although there had been signs.”
“And his Allies List?”
“Sometime in-between if I had to hazard a guess. Having seen the list, I must admit. He wanted anyone on the list to agree to being on the list.”
“So the squirrel in Salzberg isn’t an ally?” Feeble joke.
“Oh, the squirrel’s an ally. If in Zurich. Just not the Tether Heads—they were an amateur rugby squad. Back in the day, him and his mates.”
“Thank you for taking care of him,” Jonathan said, and meant it. What an all-consuming use of resources.
“It’s the least we can do,” Crikey said. “Considering all he’s done for us. For Reggie. Saved us from discovery more than once. Helped us build the Institute building. All sorts of things about this place are down to him.”
The dread in Jonathan, talking about these mundane things. Because of the last question he dreaded to ask, had not asked his grandfather. But had to ask, no matter what the answer. No matter how cloudy Dr. Lambshead’s eyes.
Dr. Lambshead had snapped out of his nap and was looking around him in confusion, but his eyes were clear.
Jonathan thought he had enough voice left to reach up to those ancient ears. For the only other question that meant a toss.
His voice broke on it, shattered to pieces.
“IS SARAH STILL ALIVE, TOO? IS MY MOTHER ALIVE?”
The cloud across Dr. Lambshead’s face, the way his features crumbled inward, told Jonathan the answer even before the words that came down like thunder.
“No, Jonathan. I’m sorry. She died in an avalanche. Not far from here. I’m so sorry.”
* * *
Back in Jonathan’s room, staring blankly out at the meadow, radiant in the sunshine.
“Switzerland is that way,” Crikey said from behind him. “Italy there.” Pointing pointlessly. Jonathan didn’t much care. “But no one wants Comet Land as Man Land.” That low whistle of laughter.
Sometimes Crikey was still quite alien, in how he chose his moments. Or maybe he just didn’t want to acknowledge Jonathan’s grief. He found people rarely did. To be made uncomfortable.
To stop the travelogue, if nothing else, Jonathan asked, again, “Why is my grandfather so huge?”
“Well, my friend,” Crikey said, “there is no good way to put this.”
“Put it any way you like.”
“You’ve been miniaturized. When you fell through the trapdoor. That’s why it took so long. To fall, that is.”
“Oh. Is that all?”
“It’s the only way we allow humans to enter the Institute and the meadow. A magic Napoleon perfected, to get his troops across the Alps when he was out and about conquering and whatnot. But otherwise, you’d ruin everything, being so much larger than us marmots. Dr. Lambshead’s just been here so long he’s returned to normal size. As you will anyway, when you leave this place.”
A lark. A dream.
Odd, how it seemed the least important thing.
Of all the things now bouncing around his skull.
Chapter Fifty-One
MARMOT CARPET, POUCH AND RELEASE
“All Crowleys and Wretches shall be baked into an enormous pie that is deliberately overcooked and burned beyond recognition hey nonny nonny, yeah! All Crowleys and Wretches shall be dropped into a pit and allowed to fester and fester until they ferment beyond our torment, hey nonny nonny, yeah! All Crowleys and Wretches shall be shoved into an airtight container and dumped in a deep lake, there to drown, hey nonny nonny, yeah!”
—The Speck’s decree, as related to Ruth Less, never official or issued
Ruth Less wondered if stinky shiny Crowley had dressed in yet another bear’s body in her honor. Was this a naming day? Or perhaps a group-devouring day in their culture.
After losing the last one, he could easily have gotten a worse body, especially given Wretch’s mood. But, then, Ruth Less imagined Wretch was very busy these days and it required less thought just to find another bear, which were both plentiful and delicious. If Wretch didn’t want her tempted to eat Crowley, then he should give Crowley a gross body instead, like a giant spider body or Wretch’s own.
Crammed on top of the war elephant, on the rickety, half-smashed platform, all remains of the grand piano gone. Which Ruth Less knew had been tracked back to the Golden Sphere, which had required Wretch to work up some spells to cloak the origin of his own rabid chipmunks with Crowley faces. Now the grand pianos would drop miles away, on the head of an effigy of Crowley riding atop a scale model of the war elephant.
Crowley held her beloved Speck, standing beside Wretch, the slow one they called No-Name, and a thing made of dead leaves that was called Mange—Ruth Less believed she did smell a faint reek of group-devouring. But Wretch had said it was just a normal meeting, so she did not start the group-devouring. That would not be polite. She would wait for someone else to start, and follow suit if so. After all, this was not her world. Or her meeting.
Wretch was a huge pair of eyes on the underside of a fleshy black umbrella shielding them from the terrible weather, which included lightning and large hail-rocks. Ruth Less would’ve preferred to absorb the hail-water through her skin as on her own world, but apparently here this would be rude, too. So she just listened to the sound of stones rattling off Wretch’s hard exterior.
Not much about this place made sense, and with each day she felt Wretch made less sense, too. Heady had said many things about Wretch that Ruth Less was still mulling. (Mulling was a kind of art among her species. It might take several mulls before determining a course of action. The best mull was a mulled mull and not a hasty mull.)
Nor did Ruth Less much enjoy the shouting, although she joined in, mimicking what she heard.
“What in all the hells! … How can this be? This must be wrong. The puddle lies! The puddle lies! The puddle lies!”
Of course the puddle lies. A puddle cannot stand. This was what Heady would’ve called logic. But when Ruth Less sent that thought the Speck’s way, through the glass that trapped it, the Speck just snickered in her mind.
Oh, Ruth Less. You are droll.
Drool?
“Droll” means … never mind.
Comet Man drools fire, but is never droll.
The Comet Man is very earnest, it’s true. How do you know him?
Ruth Less projected an image of their meeting into the Speck’s mind.
Ah. That is terribly devilish of you.
She knew what “devilish” was and disapproved, sent a mental image to Speck of Speck with tiny horns and a tail.
Speck snickered.
Meantime, Wretch was telling her to shut up and they were all looking with horrible fascination at a small puddle that showed an image of another place.
At first, Ruth Less could not tell what the puddle showed, although, most boringly, they had all stared at circles of water back in Notre Dame cathedral, too. If only they’d asked they could’ve found some of the same pictures inside her pouch. But they never asked. She didn’t even think they knew about her pouch or all the things she’d collected there since she’d grown up.
But, in time, cross-referencing with her pouch, Ruth Less realized the All-Seeing Puddle showed a shimmering wave of marmots advancing across tall grass … to the outskirts of Paris and that behind them marched a vast army of hedgehog men on roosters and deer folk and badger folk, and while some were of the normal size, many were like Ruth Less: grown huge and fearsome.
“How could this have happened?” Crowley was shouting, smacking at No-Name with his bear arms. “How could you let this happen?”
Wretch, even as a vast umbrella, seemed at a loss. “My lord, it is the old magic. No one can predict the old magic.”
Old magic?
Yes, the Speck said, the old magic. Become new again. The rise of the animals, taking back what was theirs.
They all look delicious and pouch-worthy.
The Speck just snickered again. It was a master snickerer. No one snickered better.
But it was true. The flowing carpet of marmot fur was golden and glossy. The startling hedgehog men and their dangerous roosters were glorious, although she wasn’t entirely sure yet what glorious meant.
“I’ve seen enough. Get Latrine. Get ET.”
Crowley was trying to calm himself by reaching out to the minds of the salamanders inside the war elephant. But both Speck and Ruth Less already communicated with those minds. Such as they were. Salamanders often resided somewhere far distant in their thoughts. But, still, Crowley’s hurt and anger and panic came through to Ruth Less. It had not occurred to Crowley that he could lose the actual war, just that Wretch might rule him forever.
Ruth Less didn’t enjoy looking into Crowley’s brain, even through a veil of salamander thoughts. She didn’t envy the salamanders, either. In her culture, Crowley would have been declared “Mooklarak” and exiled to a distant living island, there to be in thrombosis-chloriosis with a klorb until the condition cleared up. But there seemed no such oversight here, or undersight.
Soon, the puddle showed Latrine and ET, both of them with expressions Ruth Less could now read as less than happy. Humans didn’t have much facial expression range, so it had been easy to learn.
“The animals are at the outskirts of the city on the east,” Latrine babbled. “They’re everywhere! They’ve overrun the guard towers! They’ve woven spells so that every mecha-animal they meet dies or joins them. Some say they are liberating the animals that power them and swelling their ranks this way.”
“Counterattack!” screamed Crowley.
Ruth Less hated his screaming because there was often spit involved, and his spit on the ultraviolet spectrum was a gross black-tinged phlegm, as of something not quite alive. But not all the way dead. Perhaps when the group massacre party began, she should start with Crowley. If only they would get on with it.
“No,” Wretch said calmly. “Tell everyone to fall back, use nonmagical troops if you have to. Set the Emissaries on them, and see what effect they have. Remove all mecha-animals to the city center to protect them.”
Charlemagne, as if not to be outdone, said, “Make ’em bleed! Bleed ’em out like the meat they are. Make them be like a river of blood. Pour forges into the gap. When they come out of their holes, blast them with your hot irons. Make them beg for mercy with your mania. Stick forks into their rumps. Cut off …”
But Ruth Less lost the thread. Mange was hard to understand, and she wasn’t even sure she’d heard him right, having to supply words for the nonsense ones she was sure she was hearing. Besides, it was hard to understand him over all the outcry from the pupa in their chrysalides.
She wasn’t sure if Mange knew this, but the dead leaves coating him (some would say holding him up) were rife with moth young, soon to birth. Indeed, some of the “leaves” were actually dead moths with chrysalides clinging to them. She didn’t know what would happen when they were born, but perhaps Mange would then be nothing but naked bone.
Wretch and Crowley were arguing about what to do about the marmots, while Latrine and ET shouted from the puddle at their feet and the comforting hail smashed down upon Wretch’s exoskeleton. Mange offered advice, too, but Ruth Less didn’t bother to translate in her head anymore. It hurt too much. She preferred not to know. He was better as a surging throb of moth chrysalides than as a person. Some people were like that, she’d learned.
Ahead and behind, the other war elephants, but from the high hill they currently traversed, Ruth Less could see the city of Prague in the distance: the glint of the wall surrounding it, the golden flecks of sunlight off the fortress towers. Yes, it was sunny in Prague, if not here, and the Speck had told her the hail was a “gift” from the magicians of Prague.
“We must turn the army around and march back to Paris,” Crowley was saying.
“Impossible,” Wretch said. “Impossible.”
“Mixed-use vegetables are zoned for bears,” Mange said, or Ruth Less thought he said. “With the meat of nations, we shall prevail in the arena of the stupid. Marmot marmot marmot rooster. Hedgehog.”
Ruth Less had liked Prague, found it what Heady would’ve called “elegant but quack,” or was that “quaint”? Sometimes the Speck liked her version of language better, so she didn’t mind too much misinterpreting because the Speck’s giggle made her happy.
Less likable about Prague: the people who came up to her or followed her around. The ones who approached her she ate, pouched, or ignored, depending on criteria like if they called her “fat” or “ugly.”
The pouchable she only left in there for ten minutes or so, which in pouch-time could be as much as a year, and then she set them free, to stumble down the quack cobblestone streets and regain their balance and their lives, utterly transformed.
Ruth Less liked to think that Prague would be a different place in a year, what with all the people she’d pouched and released again. A better place. One she might like to live in, depending on the war.
The small plant woman and the tall man who followed her, Ruth Less would’ve done the same to, but the woman had an aura about her and a smell that made her a stubborn bite … and the other frightened her because she could not see to the heart of him. He had no smell. He had no taste. Did he hide them or did he truly not have a taste, a smell? She would ponder this awhile before they might meet again.
Shall I rescue you from this place, Speck? Ruth Less asked, lulled into torpor by the comforting sound of the hail. It sounded more and more as it intensified like the popping out of the Lorgororstintyrooginstwuth eggs during the sacred month of Oooooooooooe. When out of the holes in the chlorinator beasts bled the fly-babies that rose to slaughter the Babkooksnatbatchpoors. Ah, such a glorious sight, and harbinger of the sixth and final season.
