that fell upon the land so that the potatoes grew no more.
Before the crossing of the Papier-Mâché Mountains, the boggies had become divided into three distinct breeds: Clubfoots, Stools, and Naugahydes.6 The Clubfoots, by far the most numerous, were swarthy, shifty eyed, and short; their hands and feet were as deft as crowbars. They preferred to live in the hillsides where they could mug rabbits and small goats, and they supported themselves by hiring out as torpedoes for the local dwarf population. The Stools were larger and oilier than the Clubfoots, and they lived in the fetid lands at the mouth and other orifices of the Anacin River, where they raised yaws and goiters for the river trade. They had long, shiny, black hair, and they loved knives. Their closest relations were with men, for whom they handled occasional rubouts. Least numerous were the Naugahydes, who were taller and wispier than the other boggies and who lived in the forests, where they maintained a thriving trade in leather goods, sandals, and handicrafts. They did periodic interior-decorating work for the elves, but spent most of their time singing lurid folk songs and accosting squirrels.
Once across the mountains, the boggies lost no time establishing themselves. They shortened their names and elbowed their way into all the country clubs, dropping their old language and customs like a live grenade. An unusual easterly migration of men and elves from Oleodor at this same time makes it possible to fix the date the boggies came on the scene with some accuracy. In the same year, the 1,623rd year of the Third Age, the Naugahyde brothers, Brasso and Drano,7 led a large following of boggies across the Gallowine8 River disguised as a band of itinerant grave robbers and took control from the high King at Ribroast.9 In return for the King’s grudging acquiescence, they set up tollbooths on the roads and bridges, waylaid his messengers, and sent him suggestive and threatening letters. In short, they settled down for a long stay.
Thus began the history of the Sty, and the boggies, with an eye to the statutes of limitations, started a new calendar dating from the crossing of the Gallowine. They were quite happy with their new land, and once again they dropped out of the history of men, an occurrence which was greeted with the same universal sense of regret as the sudden death of a mad dog. The Sty was marked with great red splotches on all the AAA10 maps, and the only people who ever passed through were either hopelessly lost or completely unhinged. Aside from these rare visitors, the boggies were left entirely to themselves until the time of Frito and Dildo. While there was still a King at Ribroast, the boggies remained nominally his subjects, and to the last battle at Ribroast with the Slumlord of Borax, they sent some snipers, though who they sided with is unclear. There the North Kingdom ended, and the boggies returned to their well-ordered, simple lives, eating and drinking, singing and dancing, and passing bad checks.
Nonetheless, the easy life of the Sty had left the boggies fundamentally unchanged, and they were still as hard to kill as a cockroach and as easy to deal with as a cornered rat. Though likely to attack only in cold blood, and killing only for money, they remained masters of the low blow and the gang up. They were crack shots and very handy with all sorts of equalizers; and any small, slow, and stupid beast that turned its back on a crowd of boggies was looking for a stomping.
All boggies originally lived in holes, which is after all hardly surprising for creatures on a first-name basis with rats. In Dildo’s time, their abodes were for the most part built above ground in the manner of elves and men, but these still retained many of the features of their traditional homes and were indistinguishable from the dwellings of those species whose chief function is to meet their makers, around August, deep in the walls of old houses. As a rule, they were dumpling-shaped, built of mulch, silt, stray divots, and other seasonal deposits, often whitewashed by irregular pigeons. Consequently, most boggie towns looked as though some very large and untidy creature, perhaps a dragon, had quite recently suffered a series of disappointing bowel movements in the vicinity.
In the Sty as a whole there were at least a dozen of these curious settlements, linked by a system of roads, post offices, and a government that would have been considered unusually crude for a colony of cherrystone clams. The Sty itself was divided into farthings,11 half-farthings, and Indian-head nickels ruled by a mayor who was elected in a flurry of ballot-box stuffing every Arbor Day. To assist him in his duties there was a rather large police force which did nothing but extract confessions, mostly from squirrels. Beyond these few tokens of regulation, the Sty betrayed no signs of government. The vast majority of the boggies’ time was taken up growing food and eating it and making liquor and drinking it. The rest of it was spent throwing up.
Of the Finding of the Ring
As is told in the volume previous to this hound, Valley of the Trolls, Dildo Bugger set out one day with a band of demented dwarves and a discredited Rosicrucian12 named Goodgulf13 to separate a dragon from his hoard of short-term municipals and convertible debentures. The quest was successful, and the dragon, a prewar basilisk who smelled like a bus, was taken from behind while he was clipping coupons. And yet, though many pointless and annoying deeds were done, this adventure would concern us a good deal less than it does, if that is possible, except for a bit of petty larceny Dildo did along the way to keep his hand in. The party was ambushed in the Mealey Mountains by a roving pack of narcs, and in hurrying to the aid of the embattled dwarves, Dildo somehow lost his sense of direction and ended up in a cave a considerable distance away. Finding himself at the mouth of a tunnel which led rather perceptibly down, Dildo suffered a temporary recurrence of an old inner-ear problem and went rushing along it to the rescue, as he thought, of his friends. After running for some time and finding nothing but more tunnel, he was beginning to feel he had taken a wrong turn somewhere when the passage abruptly ended in a large cavern.
When Dildo’s eyes became adjusted to the pale light, he found that the grotto was almost filled by a wide, kidney-shaped lake where a nasty-looking clown named Goddam paddled noisily about on an old rubber sea horse. He ate raw fish and occasional side orders to travel from the outside world in the form of lost travelers like Dildo, and he greeted Dildo’s unexpected entrance into his underground sauna in much the same way as he would the sudden arrival of a Chicken Delight truck. But like anyone with boggie ancestry, Goddam preferred the subtle approach in assaulting creatures over five inches high and weighing more than ten pounds, and consequently he challenged Dildo to a riddle game to gain time. Dildo, who had a sudden attack of amnesia regarding the fact that the dwarves were being made into chutney outside the cave, accepted.
They asked each other countless riddles, such as who played the Cisco Kid14 and what was Krypton. In the end Dildo won the game. Stumped at last for a riddle to ask, he cried out, as his hand fell on his snub-nosed .38, “What have I got in my pocket?” This Goddam failed to answer, and growing impatient, he paddled up to Dildo, whining, “Let me see, let me see.” Dildo obliged by pulling out the pistol and emptying it in Goddam’s direction. The dark spoiled his aim, and he managed only to deflate the rubber float, leaving Goddam to flounder. Goddam, who couldn’t swim, reached out his hand to Dildo and begged him to pull him out, and as he did, Dildo noticed an interesting-looking ring on his finger and pulled it off. He would have finished Goddam off then and there, but pity stayed his hand. It’s a pity I’ve run out of bullets, he thought, as he went back up the tunnel, pursued by Goddam’s cries of rage.
Now it is a curious fact that Dildo never told this story, explaining that he had gotten the Ring from a pig’s nose or a gum ball machine—he couldn’t remember which. Goodgulf, who was naturally suspicious, finally managed with the aid of one of his secret potions15 to drag the truth out of the boggie, but it disturbed him considerably that Dildo, who was a perpetual and compulsive liar, would not have concocted a more grandiose tale from the start. It was then, some fifty years before our story begins, that Goodgulf first guessed at the Ring’s importance. He was, as usual, dead wrong.
* * *
1 Valley of the Dolls was a successful 1966 novel about the perils of drug addiction and fame. It was adapted into a poorly received film and a bizarrely successful Xbox 360 racing game.
2 Brylcreem was a men’s hairstyling product back in the days when it was culturally acceptable for men to have hair.
3 A combination of caffeine and aspirin, Anacin is an effective headache relief and a terrible Halloween favor. One popular variant, Anacin Skywalker, was recalled after the destruction of Alderaan.
4 Cars used to be distinguished as being two-doors, four-doors, or the wildly unpopular no-doors, which had to be constructed around the driver.
5 Oleo remains a colloquial term for margarine in communities where people are too lazy to write out a nine-letter word on their shopping lists every week.
6 Naugahyde was an artificial leather jokingly said to come from mythical creatures named Naugas. In reality, Naugahyde was directly responsible for the extinction of unicorns.
7 Brasso, a metal polish, and Drano, a drain cleaner, are two of the main components of the popular Maintenance Closet Fizz cocktail.
8 Gallo wine was famed for being a cheaper version of the Maintenance Closet Fizz.
9 Either Arglebargle IV or someone else.
10 Before the invention of GPS navigation, the American Automobile Association assisted drivers by speaking in a robotic British accent and inaccurately claiming the road they were on didn’t exist.
11 Farthings, though also a historic British equivalent of the penny, were actually a division of land in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. When asked about this, Tolkien confirmed the similarity and clarified that hobbits were supposed to be the size of two hydrogen atoms.
12 The Rosicrucian Order is a philosophical secret society. Rosicrucianism directly influenced the Freemasons and the Kool Guyz Tree House Club.
13 Good Gulf was a premium gasoline offered by Gulf Oil, which fell out of popularity once arson became illegal.
14 A popular cowboy Western character, the Cisco Kid was played by a wide array actors over time. Thus, the only truly incorrect answer to this riddle is Adam Sandler, and that will only be true until 2014.
15 Probably sodium pentothal.
I
It’s My Party and I’ll Snub Who I Want To
When Mr. Dildo Bugger of Bug End grudgingly announced his intention of throwing a free feed for all the boggies in his part of the Sty, the reaction in Boggietown was immediate—all through the messy little slum could be heard squeals of “Swell!” and “Hot puppies, grub!” Slavering with anticipation, several recipients of the invitations devoured their little engraved scrolls, temporarily deranged by transports of gluttony. After the initial hysteria, however, the boggies returned to their daily routines and, as is their wont, lapsed back into a coma.
Nevertheless, jabbering rumors spread through the tatty lean-tos of recent shipments of whole, bewildered oxen, great barrels of foamy suds, fireworks, tons of potato greens, and gigantic hogsheads of hogs’ heads. Even huge bales of freshly harvested stingwort, a popular and remarkably powerful emetic, were carted into town. News of the fête reached even unto the Gallowine, and the outlying residents of the Sty began to drift into town like peripatetic leeches, each intent on an orgy of freeloading that would make a lamprey look like a piker.
No one in the Sty had a more bottomless gullet than that drooling and senile old gossip Haf Gangree. Haf had spent his life as the town’s faithful beadle, and had long since retired on the proceeds of his thriving blackmail racket.
Tonight, Fatlip, as he was called, was holding forth at the Bag Eye, a sleazy dive more than once closed down by Mayor Fastbuck for the dubious behavior of the establishment’s buxom “B-boggies,” who were said to be able to roll a troll before you could say “Rumpelstiltskin.” The usual collection of sodden oafs were there, including Fatlip’s son, Spam Gangree,1 who was presently celebrating his suspended sentence for the performing of an unnatural act with an underage female dragon of the opposite sex.
“The whole thing smells pretty queer to me,” said Fatlip, as he inhaled the acrid fumes of his nose-pipe. “I’m meaning the way Mr. Bugger is throwing this big bash when for years he’s not so much as offered a piece o’ moldy cheese to his neighbors.” The listeners nodded silently, for this was certainly the case. Even before Dildo’s “strange disappearance” he had kept his burrow at Bug End guarded by fierce wolverines, and in no one’s memory had he ever contributed a farthing to the Boggietown Annual Mithril Drive for Homeless Banshees. The fact that no one else ever had either did not excuse Dildo’s famed stinginess. He kept to himself, nurturing only his nephew and a mania for dirty Scrabble.
“And that boy of his, Frito,” added bleary-eyed Nat Clubfoot, “as crazy as a woodpecker, that one is.” This was verified by Old Poop of Backwater, among others. For who hadn’t seen young Frito walking aimlessly through the crooked streets of Boggietown, carrying little clumps of flowers and muttering about “truth and beauty” and blurting out silly nonsense like “Cogito ergo boggum”?
“He’s an odd one, all right,” said Fatlip, “and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if there weren’t something in that talk of his having dwarfish sympathies.” At this point there was an embarrassed silence, particularly from young Spam, who had never believed the unproved charges that the Buggers were “scroll-carrying dwarves.” As Spam pointed out, real dwarves were shorter and smelled much worse than boggies.
“That’s pretty stout talk,” laughed Fatlip, wagging his right foreleg, “about a body what’s only borrowed the name of Bugger!”
“Aye,” chimed Clotty Peristalt. “If that Frito weren’t the seed of a crossbow wedding, then I don’t know lunch from din-din!” The roisterers all laughed aloud as they remembered Frito’s mother, Dildo’s sister, who rashly plighted her troth to someone from the wrong side of the Gallowine (someone known to be a hafling, i.e., part boggie, part opossum). Several of the members took this up and there followed a series of coarse2 and rather simpleminded jests at the expense of the Buggers.
“What’s more,” said Fatlip, “Dildo’s always acting . . . mysterious, if you know what I mean.”
“There are those that say he acts like he’s got something to hide, they say,” came a strange voice from the corner shadows. The voice belonged to a man, a stranger to the boggies of the Bag Eye, a stranger they had understandably overlooked because of his rather ordinary black cape, black chain mail, black mace, black dirk, and perfectly normal red glowing fires where his eyes should have been.
“Them what say that may be right,” agreed Fatlip, winking at his cronies to tell them a punch line was coming. “But them that say such may be wrong, too.” After the general hilarity resulting from the typical Gangree gaff died down, few had noticed that the stranger had disappeared, leaving only a strange, barnyard odor behind him.
“But,” insisted little Spam, “it will be a good party!”
To this they all agreed, for there was nothing a boggie loved more than an opportunity to stuff himself until he was violently ill.
• • •
The season was cool, early autumn, heralding the annual change in the boggie dessert from whole watermelons to whole pumpkins. But the younger boggies who were not yet too obese to trundle their hulkish selves through the thoroughfares of the town saw evidence of a future treat at the forthcoming celebration: fireworks!
As the day of the party drew nearer, carts drawn by sturdy plow-goats rolled through the bullrush gates of Boggietown, laden with boxes and crates, each bearing the X-rune of Goodgulf the Wizard and various elvish brand names.
The crates were unloaded and opened at Dildo’s door, and the mewling boggies wagged their vestigial tails with wonder at the marvelous contents. There were clusters of tubes mounted on tripods to shoot rather outsized roman candles; fat, finned skyrockets, with odd little buttons at the front end, weighing hundreds of pounds; a revolving cylinder of tubes with a crank to turn them; and large “cherr
y bombs” that looked to the children more like little green pineapples with a ring inserted at the top. Each crate was labeled with an olive-drab elf-rune signifying that these toys had been made in the elf-shops of a fairy whose name was something very much like “Amy Surplus.”
Dildo watched the unpacking with a broad grin and sent the young ones scampering with a vicious swipe of a well-honed toenail. “G’wan, beat it, scram!” he called merrily after them as they disappeared. He then laughed and turned back to his boggie-hole, to talk to his guest within.
• • •
“This’ll be one fireworks display they won’t forget,” cackled the ageing boggie to Goodgulf, who was puffing his cigar rather uncomfortably in a chair of tasteless elvish-modern. The floor around it was littered with four-letter Scrabble arrangements.
“I am afraid that you must alter your plans for them,” said the Wizard, unsnaggling a clot of tangled hair in his long, dirty gray beard. “You cannot use extermination as a method for settling your petty grudges with the townspeople.”
Dildo studied his old friend with shrewd appraisal. The old Wizard was robed in a threadbare magician’s cloak long out of fashion, with a few spangles and sequins hanging precariously at the ragged hem. On his head was a tall, battered conical hat sloppily covered with glow-in-the-dark cabalistic signs, alchemical symbols, and some off-color dwarfish graffiti, and in his gnarled, nail-bitten hands was a bent length of silvered maggotwood that served doubly as a “magic” wand and back scratcher. At this moment Goodgulf was using it in its second office as he studied the worn toes of what in these days would be taken for black basketball sneakers. High-tops.
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