by Tim Westover
Chapter Twenty-Eight
As invitations were received and supplies for the gala accumulated in the Queen of the Mountain’s storerooms—and her treasury commensurately to dwindle—frog-duchess miscegenation was only the first of many wonderful signs. The sulfur springs poured orange juice, and the cold springs blew out blizzards. A parade of spectral forms harvested glowing mushrooms from crevices in the hallways. Sweet potatoes, though boiled and split open and filled with butter and brown sugar, arose from diners’ plates and marched in military rows. Sheep-fruit roamed over the croquet lawn and ate the blades of grass down to nubs. The earth disgorged shiny yellow rocks, which were snatched up by eager capitalists of every sort; however, when they were inspected by the children that had bought kits and guidebooks from Mother Fresh-Roasted, the rocks proved to be wet clumps of mud, laced with mica.
The reaction to all these events among the guests was unbridled enthusiasm. As portents for the upcoming gala, they were hugely effective. The artifice was first-rate; the tricks were so convincing that they seemed supernatural. Holtzclaw received much unmerited acclaim. Whenever peaches tumbled from the sky to explode in a shower of juice or whenever a rumbling from a fissure sounded like a snoring beast stirring in its sleep, the guests quivered with anticipation. They debated costumes, tried new hairstyles, and made engagements. They spent an extra hour in the baths to fortify their constitutions for anticipated debauchery and social graces, for twenty dances in a row, for marriages and matches. To Holtzclaw, this was a great encouragement. He felt that his preparations were on the right track, and the guests were accepting them in the proper spirit.
Word spread of the fantastic artifice, and booking increased. The Queen of the Mountains was fully engaged for the week of the gala, every room occupied. Their gala would welcome the largest possible crowd. All railroad cars into the valley were heaped to capacity with people and things; Johnston and Carter could not have failed to see the profit in such an event.
Holtzclaw was supervising the installation of new shelves in the cold areas of kitchen, which were needed to store up a quantity of ice cream chicks for the gala. A sleepy Shadburn found him there.
“It’s a perfect chaos, Holtzclaw,” said Shadburn, scratching his head under his hat. “This loudness and nonsense. Is this for the gala?”
“I’ve thrown the doors open. Invitations have been sent to every evolute ghost with a mailing address.”
“Well, if that’s what you think best. It’s just so exhausting.” Shadburn sighed. “As long as there’s a lake, then I’ve done my part. I’m not needed here.”
Holtzclaw did not say anything; he did not disagree with Shadburn.
“You and Ms. Thompson have everything well in hand,” continued Shadburn. “I had thought that I would try something else, another project.”
“Perhaps, in a few seasons, you’d have the capital to start something, if all goes well at the gala.”
“A few seasons! That’s such a long time away. Too many wearisome banquets between now and then. Maybe I will borrow something from the vault right now.”
“You won’t find a crumb, Shadburn. All of the money has been sown back into the earth, in anticipation of a great harvest. It has either gone into the dam or into the gala.”
“Oh,” said Shadburn. He rubbed his cheeks with the heels of his hands, working away drowsiness. “Well, that’s very good, very good. I suppose that it wouldn’t do it go fetch any more gold from down below either. Couldn’t do it anyway—there’s a lake in the way. But perhaps I could collect a few dollars and make a start with some of these ice cream chicks. Where do they come from?”
“They hatch from snowballs that Mother Fresh-Roasted’s frozen hens lay,” said Holtzclaw.
“Would she sell a few of these, do you think? A franchise opportunity? What do you think the return on that would be, Holtzclaw, if we were to take it out to, say, Charleston or Augusta? Or Milledgeville? Wouldn’t the people there think it just the top of fashion?”
“I wouldn’t know,” said Holtzclaw. “The hens probably wouldn’t be happy out of the valley.”
His employer nodded. “Well, I’ll think it over.” Shadburn picked up two ice cream chicks—one chocolate, one strawberry. He cupped them in his hands and began to leave the cold storage room but then turned back.
“Just to be sure—you didn’t invite those foreign women to the gala, did you? The moon maidens?”
“They didn’t invite us to their valley,” said Holtzclaw.
•
On the eve of the gala, green lights drew the hotel guests and staff onto the lawn, around the kitchen. These will-o’-the-wisps orbited the building latitudinally at irregular speeds and intervals. A bright flash from one of the orbiting green spots illuminated the awed faces.
“It’s going to be quite the party, isn’t it, Mr. Holtzclaw?” said one of the guests, elbowing Holtzclaw in the ribs chummily.
Holtzclaw excused himself to look for Abigail. She was organizing a brigade of employees near one of the springhouses.
“What is this, Ms. Thompson?”
“I think you know, Holtzclaw,” she said.
“It could be an electrical discharge. A short in the refrigeration system or the flood lights.”
“But it isn’t,” said Abigail. Holtzclaw nodded his head.
The green lights pulsed faster, and their brown cousins dimmed. The orbits grew larger, and Holtzclaw shuddered to see green lights spreading down the elevated corridor that connected the kitchen to the main structure of the hotel.
“If there is a fire, we will have to destroy the passageway,” said Holtzclaw. “We can’t let the flames spread to the hotel, not on the night before the gala. Should we get the explosives?”
Following the best building practices, the kitchen was set a little distance away from the main hotel, but it was connected to the whole by a two-story covered walkway to provide the wait staff with an enclosed passage by which to deliver hot food to the dining room. The walkway was supported on just three arches, and at each of their keystones, there were panels to which small explosive charges could be set. In case a fire should break out in the kitchen and threaten to run out of control, the linking passageway could be destroyed quickly and cleanly, and the fire would never spread to the dining room or ballroom or guest quarters. It was the height of prudence to have enough dynamite on hand at all times.
A mournful keening began to rise from the mountainside, building in pitch and volume. The air smelled like smoke; children sniffled. A few fat raindrops fell and then, as if the sky changed her mind, a hot wind blew instead. All at once, the will-o’-the-wisps popped, like bubbles, and in their place, a low purple fire clung to the kitchen building. It roved in ectoplasmic tongues over the wood and brick and stone.
“That’s the final sign,” said Holtzclaw. “We need to blow up the passage. Cut off the kitchen for loss and save the rest of the hotel.”
Holtzclaw ran to the storeroom, unlocked the cherrywood box that contained the dynamite, and placed several charges into the hands of trained employees. The team approached the kitchen passage, but Abigail held up her hand to stop them.
“What, you want to try to put it out?” said Holtzclaw. “There’s no time.”
Abigail walked to the kitchen building, now consumed in purple flame, and up the front steps. “Toasty but not too hot,” she said. “Just right for a cookout.”
She led a few employees into the kitchen and brought out fixings for an impromptu roast. Children cooked sausages on the end of green twigs. The purple fire seemed content to crisp the edges of the treats. Holtzclaw kept an eye on the passage, to see if the flame would spread, but the flame obediently stayed confined to the kitchen building.
“It’s a whale of trick,” said one of the guests, again throwing an elbow toward Holtzclaw.
“No trick,” he said. His hands were still clammy from the gravity of the decision he’d made, even if it had not needed to be carried ou
t.
“I’ve pulled the same stunt at my own boarding house, when the guests could do with a bit of a shake-up,” said another guest, joining their friendly circle, his mouth rimmed with grease. “You run the show the same way a carnival fire-eater does: it’s a simple trick of converting animal fluids to vapor and thus preventing the chemical fluids from mixing with the solids.”
“Quintessentially,” said the first guest.
“We’d set it off with fireworks though,” said the second. “It’s the sesame on the bun, Holtzclaw. Too bad you don’t have fireworks.”
“You have that dynamite,” said a third guest as the friendly circle swelled to a parliament. “What were you going to do with that?”
“You already brought it out from its wrappings. Where did you mean to set it off?”
“Say, you didn’t actually mean to explode part of your hotel?”
“The fire isn’t real, is it? It’s only a lark, yes?”
“My trunk! My antique Saratoga trunk!”
So to prove that the hotel had never been in danger and that the dynamite was only for their entertainment, Holtzclaw was forced to sacrifice a disused springhouse. The purple fire burning on the kitchen building subsided and died as more heads turned toward the main event. Dynamite—enough to bring down the kitchen passageway and thus enough to obliterate a springhouse—was packed into the earth, within and around the little building. Holtzclaw let a sugared-up youngster light the fuse. Dust and dirt was scattered in a fine, even mist across all those assembled.
When the smoke cleared, a geyser of icy water rose from the crater, and a new creek started to trickle down the slopes. Guests lit cigars and called it the most stupendous trick they’d ever seen—a far sight better than that ordinary purple fire—and something that could only come to a crescendo on the morrow, at the gala.
“I think this will be the most successful party I’ve ever thrown,” said Holtzclaw.
“Without a doubt, the most memorable,” said Abigail, shaking cinders from her hair.