The Fountain of Eden: A Myth of Birth, Death, and Beer
Page 25
Chapter 25
How to Trick a Trickster
Master Mirbodi turned Sir Arthur's spare bedroom into a holding cell for beings of a mythical nature, sprinkling Masaaw's magical cornmeal around the edges of the room. The Tricksters were placed in the room, and Master Mirbodi sealed off the door with the enchanted powder, though it was left open to listen in on the conversations between Coyote and Old Man.
After eavesdropping for a time, Sir Arthur made his entrance. Towards the end of the interrogation, Coyote divulged that Hades had stashed a nice portion of Hoppy Heaven Ale at Farmer John's farmhouse. But Old Man insisted this was not the case, as he had never heard about it. The Tricksters began arguing, and Sir Arthur made his exit.
He walked into the kitchen and put the kettle on the stove. The other members of Team Real were out and about, combing Eden stores and emptying appropriated bottles of Hoppy Heaven Ale in the beekeeper's backyard, which was now littered in glass and cardboard.
After pouring the hot water over the tea strainer, Sir Arthur sat down at the kitchen table, sipped at his Lapsang Souchong, and pondered. The Tricksters had conflicting information. That was odd.
So was it a trap? Was Hades setting them up?
This was a distinct possibility, but the farm had to be investigated.
Sir Arthur finished off the tea and walked into the master bedroom. He headed straight for the walk-in closet, from which he pulled a lanky object. He threw the specimen over his shoulder with a grunt, placed it sitting upright in an armchair in a corner of the bedroom, and stared at it wistfully. He had made use of this item a number of times in his past life in the annals of literature, but it had now lain dormant for some time. Pushing remembrances aside, he rubbed his hands together and touched the object with a glowing index finger. It pulsed throughout with blue-white light, and Sir Arthur dove back into the closet, tossing clothing and accoutrements every which way.
Sir Arthur strolled up the half-mile-long driveway that led to Farmer John's organic farm, as if out to stretch the legs and enjoy some Mother Nature. He glanced left, at the mounds of earth that wound their way across the farmland. The rows were ordered, but there seemed to be no order whatsoever to the veggies; some rows contained six or seven different plant varieties. He glanced right, to the large grove of apple trees that took up a good chunk of the old farmer's land. These were the very seedling apples—most of them terrible to eat—used to make Appleseed Applejack and many other brews at the Olde Eden Brewery. Then his gaze locked on the farmhouse ahead.
Rabbit watched Sir Arthur approach from the big bay window fronting the house with astonishment etched on his itchy face. He thought that perhaps the beekeeper had lost his mind, just waltzing on up to the place like he needed to borrow a cup of sugar! What could the detective be plotting? It had to be some sort of trick.
But Rabbit had been around for millenniums longer than any mythical English gentleman from the Victorian era, and experience had to count for something, didn't it?
And yet Sir Arthur's casual demeanor had the Trickster rattled. Perhaps if he was allowed to come much closer, he would throw down some kind of ken-bomb and light the house afire! That must be his plan!
And Rabbit was not going to allow it to get that far.
So he threw open the bay window and yelled out in the nastiest voice he could muster: “Stop right there, Sherlock! If you take another step I'll . . . [twitch, twitch] . . . blow your head off with a magical fire-pellet! That'll put you out of commission for a while. Or maybe you'll just end up back in your own foppish little World of Myth!”
Rabbit reached into his fanny-pack and threw a small gray pellet through the open window. The projectile sailed a little more than halfway to the beekeeper. When it hit the ground, there was a minor but violent explosion that shook the farmhouse. When the smoke cleared, a two-foot wide, three-foot deep hole decorated the driveway.
“You see?! I'm not . . . [twitch, twitch] . . . messing around with you, Holmes! I know all about your little tricks and your mind-games, and—Hey! Hey! Stop right there!”
Sir Arthur was still walking forward, taking his sweet time, his feet steadily moving, one after another, like a ticking clock.
“All right, seriously, that's . . . [twitch, twitch] . . . far enough! Do you hear me talking to you, Sherlock? I said stop right there or your ugly mytho ass is gonna be blown to smithereens!”
But Sir Arthur just kept traipsing along, unperturbed, with a stupid, know-it-all grin plastered across his face. He sidestepped the hole in the driveway with a skip and a jaunt, his smile widening to obscene proportions, his arms swinging comically at his sides.
Rabbit stood framed in the open bay window, shocked, but then the realization that the famous detective was now well within range of his arm crossed his mind. He threw out another pebble, and it exploded at the feet of the advancing figure.
Holmes reared back in the face of the blast, and his stride slowed—but only for a moment. The tweed-jacketed figure advanced, and its idiotic grin turned, to Rabbit's frightened eyes, evil.
Rabbit reached into his fanny pack, pulled out a handful of fire-pellets, and looked down into his brimming hand with an astonished look on his face, shocked that he was going this far. But he did not hesitate and threw the handful of pebbles out the window, at the mythological being advancing upon the farmhouse like an unstoppable force of nature.
There followed a massive explosion. Rabbit hacked, inhaling dust and soot. He looked out the bay window for Sherlock Holmes, but could make out nothing through the ash and smoke.
But when the effluvium cleared—he was there!
Rabbit leaped to his right and kicked open the front door with a powerful foot. He bolted out onto the porch and reached into the fanny-pack around his waist with both fists. He stopped at the top step and stood there—a seven-foot-tall yellow rabbit with a pink nose and fury in its eyes. He cocked back his pellet-filled hands, his nose twitching, his corneas bloodshot from the ash and smoke.
“IF YOU TAKE ONE MORE STEP, SHERLOCK, I SWEAR TO THE GREAT SPIRIT IT'LL BE YOUR LAS—OH, THAT'S IT!”
Rabbit chucked the pellets in his hands. Then he emptied the entire contents of his satchel upon the head of Sherlock, who grinned up at Rabbit as the enchanted fire-pellets fell down around his head like the driving rain of death.
Framed by the afternoon sun, a mushroom cloud blossomed on the west-side of Eden like a small atomic bomb had been dropped in the vicinity.
Rabbit was blown back into the house by the recoil. He crashed through the door, slammed into the far wall of the living room, and slid down to the floor.
When his senses returned, he saw through black smoke that the front porch and most of the living room was no longer there. The only thing that remained of the farmhouse frontage was the door, which hung to a chunk of drywall, wobbling drunkenly from its bottom hinge. What was left of the living room walls and ceiling were blackened with soot, and everything stank of a toxic combination of used gunpowder and charred crap.
But Rabbit could care less about the damage (after all, it wasn't his place), and thought: I got him! Thank the Great Spirit!
And then Sherlock Holmes kicked the door from its remaining hinge and walked into the wreckage of the farmhouse like he owned the place, the same condescending smile etched on his face, without the merest scratch on his person.
And oh, how that grin pissed Rabbit off! Oh, how he hated it!
So he raised himself from the floor. His fire-pellets were useless, so he would destroy this invader with fists and feet! Sherlock must have sensed this, for he went into a boxer's stance and awaited the upcoming assault.
Rabbit sprang forward on strong hind legs, his form flashing between human and animal, his floppy ears elongating and shrinking. He cocked his arm back, and with a human fist delivered a roundhouse punch to the temple of the grinning Sherlock, who made no move to block the blow.
At first Rabbit thought that he had killed this unkillab
le mytho, for Holmes's cheek caved in. His fist sank into the detective's silly putty face—and stuck where it was, lodged in his skull!
“What the hell, you asshole!” screamed Rabbit. He tried to dislodge his fist, embedded deep in Sherlock's still-grinning face, but it was hopeless.
Rabbit reared back with his other fist and took a swing at Holmes's gut. Then he wailed in fury, unable to move either of his arms. Flailing, he kicked at Sherlock's groin with a foot—and his leg sank deep into the beekeeper's crotch.
Rabbit went berserk with rage and confusion, mingled with a terrible, constricting feeling of frustration. Sobbing, he placed his last free appendage, his left leg, against Sherlock's knee in an attempt to dislodge himself. The foot buried itself into flesh and stuck fast.
Rabbit squealed and tried to head-butt the master detective in the chest. His forehead sank into Sir Arthur, and the stymied Trickster and his silly-putty foe fell to the floor of the farmhouse with a resounding crash.
The distinct tug of deja-vu was Rabbit's last sensation before losing consciousness.
Sir Arthur watched this scene from the kitchen window of the farmhouse with the very same grin plastered on his double's face etched on his own, identical face.
When Rabbit became entangled within the faux beekeeper, Sir Arthur ran around to the side of the house, clambered up into the living room, and walked inside the burning house as if he owned the place. He glanced at the two prone figures on the floor—who seemed to be a single misshapen figure with a poofy tail sticking out its backside—and, satisfied the Trickster wasn't going anywhere, proceeded to search what remained of the farmhouse.
Five minutes later, he reemerged into what was left of the living room. He had found nothing. The place was clean.
A sudden thought occurred to him, and he walked into the kitchen and opened the stainless steel refrigerator, about the only thing on the ground floor that had survived the fusillade of pellet-bombs. It was empty except for a single unopened bottle of Hoppy Heaven Ale.
Sir Arthur reached into the fridge and grabbed the beer. He peered at it for a moment, shrugged, and cracked it open. He sniffed it, shrugged again, then downed half the bottle in a single quaff. He finished off the beer, set the empty bottle atop the fridge, and walked back into the living room.
Sir Arthur jumped down to the ground and walked into the veggie fields, where he had earlier deposited a handy wheelbarrow. He grabbed it and wheeled it around to the front of the farmhouse. He vaulted into the house and pulled and prodded the trapped Rabbit to the edge, took aim and pushed. The Trickster, still attached to the dummy, fell into the wheelbarrow with a thud and a muffled groan.
Sir Arthur wheeled Rabbit down Farmer John's driveway, avoiding the piles of burning rubble and the smoking craters, heading back to the bee farm before the local authorities arrived and began asking unanswerable questions.