That the grudges of farmers could curse their children to lives of gloom.
That the fears of kings could cut the tree before it ever took root.
Yes, if there was anything he had learned, it was that the spills of the father should not be left for the child to clean.
This?
This was his mess.
And he would clean it up.
There came the sound of footsteps, two pairs, he guessed, striding in tandem. The happy couple had returned.
They did not look any happier than they had an hour earlier.
Isaac stood to greet them. He forced his hands to his sides and his nerves to quiet.
“So you’ve thought about it?”
His voice echoed against the cave walls. It added a nice effect.
“Yes,” he said.
“And you still don’t want to marry each other?”
“No,” she said.
“Then I want you to listen close. You’re going to need a hoe, a pick, and a couple bags of salt. Then, one night, when your fathers are asleep, I want you to sneak out into the field and sow it with salt.”
“Sow it—
“—with salt?”
He snorted. “So nothing grows there for another hundred years. Serves them right.”
He looked at her. She looked at him. As one, they offered their hands to Isaac.
He shook simultaneously, smiling. Then he switched hands and shook again, still smiling.
“How can we ever—”
“—repay you?”
By leaving my sight this instant.
By prying the shoes off your fathers’ horses.
By buying me a short bridge to take a long walk off of.
“Your happiness is my happiness,” he settled on.
And it certainly was, as they took their happiness out of the cave and as far away from him as humanely possible.
He breathed a shaky sigh of relief.
One down, a kingdom to go.
The sun was a blister in the sky when he heard the clamor of bits and stirrups. The armies of kings and conquerors were waiting at his front door.
He did not rush out.
First, he thought.
Second, he stole into the Oracle’s closet and selected his most ethereal robe, purplish and flowing and sashed round the gut. It was much too big for him, but if he carried himself to full height and squared his shoulders, it just about fit.
Third, he broke the broom from its handle and tried it as a staff.
Fourth, he admired himself in the mirror. His hair stood on end. His fingers peeked out from underneath those wide winged sleeves. His seventeen-year-old elbows poked awkwardly no matter which way he turned.
He liked it. He looked positively mad.
Slowly, careful around the rocks, he stepped onto the land bridge. The sight of it made his stomach slip—a thousand cavalry, maybe more, seething just off the shore. A thousand hooves stirring up great clods of dust. A thousand spears catching the edge of a bleeding sun. A thousand intestines itching to spill and reveal their secrets to the One Who Knew All.
Unfortunately for Isaac, that One was gone fishing. He was all they had.
He coughed.
“Excuse me.”
On went the thunder of horsehide, the clink of steel and steel, the brisk clap of banners in the tides.
“Listen,” he said, then stronger, “Listen up.”
Was that a hesitation? Was that an ear bent his way?
“Listen up. Listen. Listen to me. Listen to me!”
A gust of wind caught the hem of his robe and nearly pitched him into the sea, but he recovered.
“Listen to me, all of you. You stand before me, sheltering a hundred princes, princes you say are fit to bear the crown. Well, let me tell you. I’m no mathematician, but surely they can’t all be fit to bear the crown. It just can’t be done.”
There were grumbles and whispers in the audience now. Confusion held their spears.
“You want a prophecy? Try this one on for size. Do you all want your sons heading off to the capital to be gutted like a mackerel? No? I thought not. Because that is what will happen, you mark my words. Come ten, twelve years, he’ll hear these prophecies and he’ll learn he was born for greatness and he’ll set off to reclaim his rightful throne when it’s really not all that much a fuss anyway. And since he’s never done anything, never picked up anything more than a reel or rod, they will skewer him like a shish kabob. You want a prophecy? I can prophesize that.”
He licked his lips. Something pounded in his chest.
“And as he’s roasting, he’ll remember that, really, it wasn’t all that terrible at home and maybe you weren’t such a bad guy all these years and hey, I had it better than I thought. I did.”
Harnesses creaked with the shifting of ranks. Then the king burst forth.
“Aha! Traitors! You see—”
“And as for you,” he said, rounding on the king, “don’t you know he’ll only grow to resent you? You know better than I that the babe will never actually die. He’ll roll into a culvert or stumble onto some driftwood or find a rather generous wolf pack, and sooner or later, he’ll be at your gates, demanding your head on a stick.
“You have come to the Oracle for advice? Here is my advice to you. Don’t raise your sons as kings and conquerors. Don’t leave them out to dry. Don’t sell them for your own delusions of grandeur. Please, just raise them to be your boys. They say that the sins of the father must also be the sins of the son? Well, why? I mean—that is, who says it? Me? An Oracle? Don’t you ever stop to think that the future is only so blackened because you left it on the spit too long?”
“O’ Oracle, O’ Oracle, what then must we do?”
He shook his head, just so.
“Go home,” he shouted. “Go home and play with your sons and be good fathers, you poor bastards. We aren’t all so lucky.”
A shudder passed through the armies. Cloaks were donned. Swords were sheathed. A thousand warhorses tossed their hands and flicked their tails and set off on the path home.
At the back of the pack, he saw a gold-breasted fellow bow his head. It was, Isaac realized, a beleaguered sort of bow.
Exhausted as he was, Isaac had to stand a little straighter. Who would have known that with a few words, he could bring kings and conquerors to their knees?
Who would have known?
And yet, though kings and conquerors may not believe it, they are neither the first nor the last in all affairs. They are not the rose tossed from a balcony. They are not the handkerchief with artistically-placed nostril sweat. They are not the pothole of contentment.
That is, of course, the prerogative of true love.
And so, as daylight sank into the sea, Miss Lady returned to the Isle of Blintz.
She had cleaned up a bit, probably as best as she ever possibly could. The color in her cheeks helped, too. Her cloaks were falling off all around, but she didn’t seem to mind. She looked expectantly at the apprentice.
“Well? Is it done?”
“Thanks to you,” he said, grinning, and before he could finish she swept him up in her arms and spun him around.
“Oh, how glorious. I never thought I could help an Oracle—” was that a wink? “—change the future. I just thought it couldn’t be done.”
“But it can,” he said, struggling out of her grasp. “The future isn’t some stone or tapestry mapped out from the beginning of time to its end. It is whatever you make it. And you, Miss Lady, have made this one all the better for being in it.”
She blushed.
Isaac’s shins felt suddenly dry. He rubbed a hand across the back of his neck.
“You know, Miss Lady—I mean—you know I’m not—”
“I know.”
I know.
“And you still believed me?” he asked, astounded.
She smiled tenderly. “The future is what you make it.”
“You see, you’re worth more than that
pauper’s upper lip could ever hope for. There must be someone else who understands that.”
“Really?”
“Really,” he said. “In fact, they’re probably right under your nose.”
It was then that Isaac remembered he was young and seventeen and looked like a bruised Montgomery Clift and she was heaving and spread all over and it was very dark and he was seventeen. Their eyes met.
In a different type of a story, this would have been the moment where Isaac looked at her and she looked at Isaac and the two realized they had only been waiting for this moment to spring passionately on each other in a way that made them glad for the protection of a cave.
But this wasn’t that type of story. Instead, she studied Isaac’s eyes for a bit, then his nose, and chin, and then her face lit up.
“The stable boy!”
“Pardon?”
“The stable boy! Oh, he’s a dream. Nay, better, he’s like a young King Conrad. The way he muscles those stallions, the way he wields that pitchfork…”
Isaac was smiling.
“Then what are you waiting for?” he said. “The future is what you make it.”
But, truly, what are you waiting for? The sun was nearly set and Isaac had not yet repaired the loom.
“How can I ever thank you?”
“Take this,” he said, handing her the handkerchief, “and go find your stable boy.”
But truly, go. The moon was nearly up and the dust on the vanity could have choked a small rodent.
She seemed to receive the message. She gathered her skirts—yes, all of them —giggled, and cantered to the mouth of the cave. Her footsteps plodded into silence.
He had done it.
Isaac did not savor his victory long. Instead, he found the broom at the bottom of the closet and went to work.
“You really think I’m worthwhile?”
She had come back. He planted the broom handle and gave her a severe look.
“Of course.”
“You really think I’m unique?”
“Of course.”
“You really don’t think I’m ugly?”
“Oh. Certainly not,” he said, holding his face together. He almost felt bad for it, but decided that this was not the time for hard truths. Gadzooks, the moles alone...
It was near midnight when Isaac spotted the Oracle picking his way slowly across the land bridge. There was no mistaking that beard.
Isaac draped the washrag across a chair and waited.
“Welcome home, Master,” he said.
The Oracle stopped. First, he laid his walking stick and flies by the mouth of the cave. Then, he looked. He looked near and far. He looked up and down and all around. He sniffed. He whiffed. He ran a finger over the bust of Eugenia the Regular and licked it.
“That’s turquoise in the fourth row, my boy,” he said only.
Isaac froze. His kneecaps felt suddenly damp.
The Oracle lowered himself into his armchair and gazed up at Isaac. The Oracle did not seem surprised to see him at all.
Of course he didn’t.
A thousand arguments rose and died in his throat. He simply watched the old man run his hands over his armchair and remembered the tremendous weight of the thing. It had not been nearly as comfortable as he’d imagined.
The silence spun on a moment longer.
Then Isaac said—
“Can I make you some tea, Master?”
“That would be lovely, my boy,” he said. He patted Isaac’s hand. “How did you know?”
Chapter 1
A Stink At Copperworks
The nocket was stuck. That was for sure. Twiggs Barkvalve had seen it before. The eyeball on the outside of Gnomelight generator number 57 was closed. If it blinked it meant the wayport was in use. If it was open then it meant the wayport was active. But closed was bad. Very bad.
The great engines around him worked double time to fix it. Steam spewed. Smoke billowed. Copper pipes rattled. It looked like a gigantic multi-segmented snake trying to cough up a train engine.
Twiggs was powerless to help it. Stuck nockets were disastrous. Somewhere along the Great Track a wayport had already failed or been disconnected from the nocket.
Not good.
A broken or disconnected wayport meant gnomes stranded…or worse.
It meant stranded engines and train cars. And whatever the train cars carried wouldn’t be seen again.
The wayport was near Jigville. The second nocket to go down this week and the third in the past month. Puddletown and Rampsburg had also lost their connections with the other hubs.
Something had to be done.
But no one wanted to venture out into the Gray Expanses. Search parties were a figment of a would-be hero’s imagination. Those that were lost stayed lost.
He certainly wasn’t going to go out there. Not that it was completely safe at Coppertwist, but at least it was a hub. He could rely on the wayports hereabouts. The nockets for the local wayports were less prone to failure.
He didn’t envy the outliers. Gnomes that didn’t care for life in a grimy, dingy hub city opted for more pastoral settings. Someone had to raise the sheep and the pigs and farm the cabbage, corn, soy beans, barley and the like. But less of it made it to the Coppertwist Hub each year. At least that’s what the produce criers in the street claimed, and that’s how they justified the higher prices of the commodities they sold.
Those engines that weren’t lost due to broken or disconnected wayports were becoming ordinary. But they weren’t ordinary trains. They were losing their ability to learn and retain what they once knew. Yes, they were made of copper, chrome, brass and steel. But they were also infused with a portion of the magisi, a gift bequeathed to all gnomes by the Wayfarer. It was taboo to speak of their god, so most just called it the magic of the gnomes and left it at that. Twiggs had some of it as well. A lot, actually, though he had no idea what it really was. But it allowed him to speak to the engines and imbue them with intelligence. The trains knew how fast to go, where the tracks were weak, where the bends were, how much fuel to use, how much pressure to apply when breaking; the list was nearly endless. Each was almost like a sentient creature.
Further down on the second floor of the factory there was a flash of light, and suddenly a train appeared. The whistle blew needlessly over the high-pitched shrieking of brake blocks on metal wheels. Twiggs watched, transfixed in horrified amazement at the silver angel that had just burst on the scene. Cagglebrists were the pride of gnomish trains outfitted with powerful locomotive engines and superior breaking systems. But the end of the line was an eighth of a mile down and the train had come in hot!
Every engineer, foreman and laborer at Copperworks knew that the train was going to crash.
Twiggs waited for the inevitable sound of fifty tons of metal crashing through the brick outer wall of the factory and into Flounder Point Bay.
But it never came.
The entire train was briefly outlined in white light before coming to a grinding stop just short of the pylons at the end of the line.
The factory floor erupted into jubilant applause and cheering.
“Did you just see that?” exclaimed a stout gnome that had just rounded the corner. Dewey Needleworth had the bushiest red moustache Twiggs had ever seen. There was a mouth under it somewhere that further exclaimed, “That was the Jigville Volley! I’d stake my suspenders on it!”
Twiggs thought his moustache would have made for a more impressive staking, but Dewey was right. The bright blue engine was unmistakable. Presently, another gnome found the two of them.
“Do ya lads know what just happened there?” Fizz Sodderbolt was skinny, at least for a gnome. His elongated face and preposterously big ears were practically red with excitement.
In all the furor, Twiggs’s right eyebrow had sagged. Can’t a gnome keep a sense of style about him these days? He spit in his hand and pushed the eyebrow out of the way.
“Not a clue, Fizz. You got some
inside information on it? If so, we are,” he cleared his throat, “all ears.”
Fizz wrinkled his nose at the joke, but was unperturbed. “Never seen the like. Let’s make a quick mosey that way and mayhap we’ll be among the first to know.”
None of them needed any urging as they broke into a plodding run. Dewey muttered about incorrigible suspenders as they passed low buzzing generators, the iron works where foundry men were forging pieces of steel, and the copper works where copper was being formed into tubes and wires and brass fittings. The closer they got to the end of the line, the more bodies filled the corridor until they could get no closer.
The door of the first train car opened and out stepped…three creatures that were unfamiliar to Twiggs. Each’s chin stuck out too far. Their foreheads were too big, their heads were bald except for a few sparse hairs, they had snouts instead of noses, and lumps of what looked like chocolate pudding interspersed on their faces and arms. But even worse, they had no eyebrows whatsoever!
And their clothing was, to put it gently, not flattering. A dull brown fabric covered them from knees to sternum and was held in place by links over the shoulders.
The smallest of the three spoke in a grating voice. “Dirty little gnomes diddling, daddling and doodling in your factories. Too afraid to come out of your hub, so we come to you. What’s been happening to your wayports and your trains? We know, don’t we?”
One of the creature’s companions merely grunted. The larger of the two said, “Get on with it, Zizweck!”
“Places are kept by all, Vinkbort. I will have my words. Look at them twitching.” He laughed darkly. “Where is your wayman Cuttlewunk? He has no wayport to watch now. He is somewhere, but not for your knowing. No. But we will return him to you, maybe. But we demand something in return. Where is the old toad—Kigzul the Furnace Tender— your king?”
Spindle Buckethead stepped forward from the throng of factory laborers. The chief foreman was covered in soot and grease. He stood at the bottom of the trestle, where he met Zizweck’s smug gaze. “The big boss isn’t here, Grollop. And neither should you be. Guards, seize these filthies and then we will send word to the big boss.”
Zizweck wheezed a laugh. “Filthies, the gnome calls us. Have you looked in a mirror, Grease-weed?”
Heroes: A Raconteur House Anthology Page 8