by Mark Jacobs
*****
Pence stood like a picket in the ground, rigid, speechless. Standing in one place for more than a moment provided him a rare chance to think, and he made his mind up quickly as to what to do next: he charged the purple-clad giant with his sword leveled like a jousting lance, the green mist flowing as wildly as the mane of a galloping war-horse.
Pence drove his sword clean through the man in purple’s black boot. The boot promptly withdrew from the fight. Pence put his hands on his hips and his posture bloated triumphantly. Then the boot swung back through, a sweeping pendulum kick that sent the boy zipping heels over backside through the air like a trapeze artist without a net. He crashed down in a tumbling heap, head bouncing on knees until his foot caught in a divot and momentum sprouted him up into a set of mismatched, flimsy front-handsprings, punctuated by an abrupt stop square atop his feet.
The force of the kick caused Pence’s cape to cocoon around his body, preventing his meager belongings from scattering when he landed, but the velvetleaf itself took significant damage. Running his fingers along one frayed edge, Pence exhaled with livid patience, struggling to constrict his anger. He reached to pull the petals of his hat lower, lest the ever-intrusive Sun try his temper any further. Curiously, the moondaisy was not on top of his head. He looked up. He looked down the path. The flower was nowhere to be seen. His thin-cut lips resiled like a beast baring fangs and he stalked toward the purple-clad giant.
The purple-clad giant–who was no giant at all among other grown men and women and some few tall children–had been hopping up and down on his good foot and holding the bad, but when he spotted Pence on the warpath he plucked the splinter out of his boot, flicked it spinning into the grass with habile contempt, and put both feet on the ground. Diaphanous green mist spiraled up from the tiny hole in his boot. He wobbled unsteadily, like a man who has been standing too long in the sun, though his head never moved a whisker, for he kept his bottle hidden there and ever balanced.
“Here now, the Prince!” boomed Pence with a voice so condescending it could only mean he had no forethought whatsoever how much harm a second kick might do him. “Stop this sniveling and return my sword to me, at once! I’ll not ask again.” Pence extended his open hand in the air, the same ingenuous motion he had used to summon the splinter free from the fence.
The Prince shifted weight off his tender foot. He studied the boy in silence, eyes coved in shadows under the brim of his hat. The purple stovepipe set a gaunt silhouette against the sun, while his lustrous fur cloak billowed like a bag of smoke. With a sable-lined cowl raised over his mouth, only his long white nose peered out into the daylight, crooked with an ancient break, the tip peppered with dirty pores and pin-sized pockmarks.
“You provide a poor introduction of yourself, the Prince,” Pence called up with his hands cuffed around his mouth.
The Prince’s nostrils flared.
“Look alive,” said Pence as he entered into the giant’s long shadow, “and make ready my sword, man. It was an accident, letting go after trying to maim you. It could have happened to anyone that was trying to maim you, you see? Honest mistake. That was my first fight, actually. Also, you’ve made me lose my best and favorite and only hat. I demand compensation.”
The Prince glowered and stooped closer. He cracked his nose like a man cracks his knuckles. “I beg your pardon?” he growled from the iciest vaults of his lungs.
“Rules of war, you know,” Pence added in a conciliatory tone. “I assume we can skip past the usual tired alimony? Good.” As he spoke, Pence paced to and fro with his hands clasped behind his back, as had been his habit in the garden. “Now, after you pay me–and it’s got to be diamonds and gold, I really cannot stress that enough–I will directly commence to interrogate you. Expect copious amounts of torture and horrors of every unimaginable preclusion.”
The Prince squelched back a guttering hiccup. Behind his cloak and shadows he peered at the boy with naught but his dagger nose and said no more.
“Now,” Pence enounced both as formally and resentfully as he could, “are you prepared to accept the consequences for your crimes in the garden one hundred years ago, the Prince?”
“No man alive knows the face of the royal son who felled the Holy Tree,” spat the cold voice behind the thick sable. “Who are you to address me so, charge, and judge me? Who are you to perceive the color of my heart as though I wore it pinned to my lapel? What are you?” he added as his momentum waned.
“I’ll ask the questions!” Pence fired back, eyes blazing like serpent scales in torchlight. “What’s your game with this?” He untucked the penny and thrust it forward, displaying the carved heart to the Prince.
“Tsss!” the Prince hissed and drew back, looking away as though the coin burned his eyes to the sight; this afforded Pence an unrivaled view of the giant’s yawning nostrils. “My wish… The last… It was supposed to… That tan pants-ed fool!” the Prince jabbered. “Then you must be… But how? I cut out–”
“I don’t know what you’re blathering about,” said Pence, staring the Prince directly in the nostrils, which were the likeliest looking things to be eyes that he could see on the giant’s face, “but my name is Pence and I know your hands are at the heart of this.” He shook the penny in frustration as he spoke. “What does it mean? Why did you send it? Where is the Princess? And fetch my bloody sword already!”
The Prince burped. An oily bubble drifted out of his nose and spiraled away before imploding. “Pence? Pence, you say? Truly? After all these many travails… And you can hear me in there? And formulate words? Move by your own volition? And you remember your name? Your mind is undaffled?”
Pence eyed the purple giant queerly. “Just how melon-coddled are you, the Prince? My mind is a rock.”
“Astounding! So lifelike. I’ve not seen this trick before,” the Prince prattled. “How is it accomplished? What wizardry have you forged, hidden in your own legend? And what’s to stop me from stepping on you right now and taking the penny back to the well where it belongs? Har!”
“What a rotten, ugly thing to say! What are you, the world’s biggest onion? Shame on you! Why should you want to step on me? What have I ever done to you?” Pence set one leg back to brace himself, opting to weather any blows from above rather than dive away if the Prince’s foot fell true to his word.
“What spell is it, then? Tell me!” the Prince barked. “Did the well grant this miracle? Did your human bones grow too old? What legions of nature do you command?” The Prince waved a hand above Pence’s head, testing the air for invisible puppet strings. Finding nothing, he let his hand drop as he gazed into the sky, investigating the clouds for clues to the force that animated the boy. “Vegetables… are they the key to immortality?” he wondered aloud.
“My Mother would probably say so,” Pence politely replied.
The Prince licked his lips. His right hand squirmed into his haversack. “Maybe with salt…” he mumbled.
“Don’t even think about it,” said Pence, standing his ground. “Try to eat me and I’ll rip out your tongue. Tell me what you know of Pea and let’s be done with it. I want to go home.”
“Peas? What peas?” the Prince said absently. “I wonder if I still have some of that whale butter left over…”
“Why did you send the penny?” Pence demanded.
The Prince quit his search for salt and shuffled forward. “But it should be obvious,” he grinned. “I have a wish, too. Now here we are, and I see nothing in between myself and the well but one small scoop of smashed potatoes.” He raised his boot over Pence’s head.
Comprehending at once the gravity of the predicament, Pence threw his hands over his head, penny held up like an umbrella. “Hey! Whoa! Wait a minute! Let’s talk about this!”
“I thought it long odds, I confess, trusting that clod with the tan pants. It was a poor decision that cost far too much.”
“Are you going to bore me to death or step on me?” Pence asked impatien
tly.
The Prince pulled his left hand from his sleeve and held it up for Pence to see–what remained there was fingerless, the row of fragile bones hacked off below the bottom knuckles, leaving a broad stump with his thumb stuck out like a gnarled stick, still gloved in black. Blood scabbed over the grisly mess, solidified with flesh, bone, and sawed leather.
“To think,” said the Prince, “I did this because I feared you… The stories about you are many. But look at you, now. I do not understand what exactly you’ve done to yourself, nor why you’ve come out to meet me, leaving your sanctuary and the well unprotected–” his voice lowered hatefully with each word, “–and why my penny is out here, with you, instead of in there,” he pointed to the garden with his nose, “buried like a bad dream at the bottom of that forsaken abyss.” All the while his boot hovered over Pence, shaking with strain, ready to drop. “But this chance is too good to pass. When you are dead I will take the penny to the well myself. I shall say the words to bring us back. Goodbye, Pence. Ever you have been a loyal subject to your Prince.”
“Don’t do it! At least give my sword back so I can defend myself! I’ll not ask again–”
“This time, stay dead.”
Pence dug his heels into the dirt, flexed his arms, and stared pleadingly into the Prince’s nostrils. “The gate may not open if you squash me,” he peeped, his voice failing him for the first time in his life.
The shadow of the foot lifted away.
Pence lowered the penny in relief.
A heavy thud made Pence turn his head. The silver beaks of a two-headed dragon greeted him, gleaming like the full moon–here was the Prince’s battleaxe, sharp and heavy. “The gate will open, I think,” said the Prince.
“Uh oh,” said Pence.
The Prince stepped back from the boy. Holding the axe with his one good hand, he aligned the deadly blades with Pence like a croquet mallet introducing itself to a ball. “This will be a little more satisfying, I think. No need to get my boots dirty.”
Pence evaluated the scene while the Prince perfected his stance, which was no simple feat given his handicap. When the Prince was at last content with his approach, Pence had very nearly puzzled out what was going to happen to himself when the axe came swinging through. He held up the penny like a shield this time.
“Is that the most you can do against me?” the Prince roared.
Pence ducked his head low behind the penny and set his feet wide.
“Can you not rise up into a tree? Can you not cause roots to seize my ankles or stones to fall from heaven upon my head? That is what they say, is it not? Har!” He jabbed the brim of his hat up with his left-hand stump and Pence was finally granted a clear view of the face that belonged to the long white nose.
Where the gardener wore his age well, the Prince’s skin was like the surface of an old fallen log–petrified and cracked and rotting all at once, speckled with fleshy truffles and scabby knobs. His sneer was a permanent fixture, like bark warped around a knot in wood. He raised the axe into a high backswing.
“When you see him, tell my old man I’m sorry I didn’t find the Princess,” croaked Pence. If he could have closed his eyes, this would have been when.
Mid-swing, the Prince twisted before the great battleaxe split Pence in half. The twin dragons screamed up over his top hat in a wild loop–he twirled like a ballerina to keep from losing his handle. With a huff of effort, he corralled the gleaming blades around to land precisely where they had begun.
“Was that just a practice swing?” Pence asked. “Fair enough. Well, go ahead, I’m ready.” He tightened his grip on the penny.
“What old man?” cried the Prince. “I thought you were the old man!”
“Oh, you’re one to talk! You look like a dry-suckled radish with root mites! Do I look like an old man?” Pence asked accusingly. “I’m a gentleman of fancy in the prime of my youth, you moron.”
“What old man, then?”
“You should know–you cut out his heart and kidnapped his girlfriend. Any of this ringing a bell? Oh yeah, he’s waiting for you, all right, the Prince. He’s waiting for you good.”
The Prince took a step back and his face receded into his hideaway of sable shadow. “Then what has he sent you for?” he queried in a rasp.
“How many times must I tell you? To find her!” Pence thrust the penny forward, heads-up to the giant.
“Why has he not come himself?”
Pence looked down at his feet, infinitely irritated. “Why would he, when he’s got me? Now, are you going to answer my questions or shall I kill you with my bare hands right on this spot? I’ll just add sword-burglary and wanton stupidity to your index of transgressions and be done with it.”
“Forgive me if I’m confused, but I still don’t understand what I’m supposed to be afraid of, here?” the Prince said softly, perhaps to himself. His eyes flickered with quick calculations. “Have you supernatural powers or haven’t you?”
“Of course I have! Women fall before me like leaves before winter!”
“What will happen if I just step on you and go to the garden?”
“No telling.” Pence shrugged casually. “That old man is kind of a soggy biscuit. The girl made him go crazy in the head, and I’m afraid he was never very bright from the get-go. If you go chopping his door down, I don’t know what he’ll do to you, although he kept warning me about something not to tell you… something about his arms. I wasn’t really paying attention.”
“So, he’s armed, is he?” the Prince mused to himself. “This complicates things a bit.” A moment later, he turned away from Pence with one shoulder held high, shielding his face the same as a mime preparing a new personage. When he turned back he dropped to one knee, using his left-hand stump to balance himself on the handle of his axe; as he did so, his shadow on the path shortened by half, leaving Pence within the dark confines of the top hat. “I do not know if the Princess lives,” he said urgently, “but I know where to find her.”
Pence looked up. “You don’t know anything about anything. I should rip your tongue out right now to stem your lies.”
“In all likelihood I am the only one alive who might deduce her location.”
“My old man said neither wind nor wing could find her. How could you know? You’re so old,” Pence reasoned as though he had a sour taste in his mouth.
“Yes, I am–among other things–quite exceedingly very terribly old. But I am equally well-traveled. In my distended years I have journeyed to each and all of the One Hundred Kingdoms of Man. I have met every lord and nobleman who ever put on a pair of silken pantaloons. I have opened every door in every hall of every court in every castle, and the princess is not in any of them. That is how I know where she is. If you would only be so kind as to part with a small token for all my troubles… say, the penny… I will show you the way. That is what you seek, after all, is it not? Then we shall both have what we must.”
Pence glared savagely at the Prince. “You lie to save your own skin. She stays with me,” he nodded down to the penny, now back in its sling, concealed by the velvetleaf and secure under his armpit, “where she likes it. And if you try to lay so much as a finger on her, I’ll–”
“Boy! Silence, you! I’ll not stoop to it, you can believe that. A broken hook will catch no fish, a grincheur’s penny buys no one a wish. And stepping on you here does me no good, if the gardener still abides.” The Prince took a moment to think. “It seems there is only one thing left to say.”
“Enlighten me, do. Then prepare to die.”
“Certainly.” The Prince swallowed another belch and gathered himself for a moment. “I am not the Prince who tried to murder the orphan boy in yonder garden these hundred years passed,” said the purple-clad giant with suddenly hurt feelings. “You have me obfuscated, young master, by your leave.”
“Obfuscated, am I? Impossible! I used to have a precious jewel for a brain–that makes me a master of politics. Don’t think you can outsmart me.�
�
“Your error is quite common, really. Nothing to be ashamed of.”
“Hey,” Pence could not help but react, insulted, “just what are you insinuating, huh? I’ve got nothing to be ashamed of!”
“Exactly. So we agree.”
“Hold on–”
“You said it yourself, young master: there’s nothing wrong with being obfuscated about the truth. You are very wise.”
“I said that? Are you certain?” Pence called up. “Very wise, did I?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Because I rather doubt any obfuscation has occurred. Is occurring. Errr… I’m overwhelmingly certain I’m… fuscated. Yes. Nothing whatsoever could possibly convince me otherwise. It’s all that purple you’ve got on–you’ve got to be the Prince. And you’ve been spying on me, which is just what I would do if I were you.”
“Precisely!” concurred the purple-clad giant. “I’ve been on the lookout for him, too! After all, if I was the notorious Prince who felled the Holy Tree, who murdered an orphan boy in yonder garden, who took his sister’s hand away and was forthwith exiled from the line of his father, the King, I should be running from you right now–as you have so eloquently explained to me that the wrath of flowerbeds and pumpkin patches at long last comes to call–instead of being on the lookout, here, for myself somewhere else erstwhile, unbeknownst to you and me and all the three of us.”
Pence took a step back and offered a rudimentary curtsey. “Well put. I like a man who’s plainly spoken. But if you are not the Prince, then who is? And why did you try to step on me and kill me with your axe–which, I must inform you, also fits the Prince’s bill?”
“I was only pretending to kill you because you thought I was the Prince, and isn’t that what the Prince would do, after all? So you see, I was aiding you in your attempt to capture what you mistook to actually be me. Tsk, tsk. Espionage is a tricky omelette, young master, one best left to the professionals.”
“Yes, I see that now.” Pence shook his head, disappointed in himself.
The Prince offered the boy an encouraging flare of his nostrils, then he cracked his nose again. “Your mind truly is a rock, isn’t it?” he muttered with mild amusement.
“So who are you?” Pence asked with an embarrassed start.
The purple-clad giant tottered from good foot to bad as if weighing which of two paths to choose. Finally he settled on the unpunctured option and said as extravagantly as a man can, “I am known by many names in many pied, prosperous provinces, young master… perceived publicly as a perpetually pious and pleasant person, peradventure, yet my purposes and parameters presently are private, a pleochroic pilgrimage principally personal in point but paramount in perspective. So prithee, if you’ll pander to a potatory presdigitator such as presently performs before you, previse me as the… as the… as the Purloiner… yes, the Purloiner, if you please, of Previously Less Portable Properties… of Other Peoples. Who Also Wears Purple.”
The Purloiner bowed deeply, throwing his cape into an arpeggio of ripples with a flick of his wrist. “At your disposal, young master.”
“What a lavish name,” Pence cooed, smitten. “I sure am impressed!”
“Thank you, young master. It will serve, in that case. Now then, let us be on our way.”
“What?” blurted Pence, startled by the suddenness with which the Purloiner was prepared to embark. “Where?”
To which the Purloiner turned his nose to the woods and said only, “We go the tunnel road.”