“Mount up,” said Garfinkel.
Frito, more or less athwart an unpromising ungulate, rode last in the procession away from the Gallowine toward Riv’n’dell. He slipped his hand into his pocket, found the Ring, and took it out in the fading light. Already it was beginning to work its slow change upon him, the transformation of which Dildo had warned. He was constipated.
* * *
1 Hominy grits are a type of corn-based porridge, typically eaten for breakfast by those who consider eating sand to be too exciting.
2 The Palmer Method of penmanship instruction was designed to make cursive even more illegible. It remains a favorite of doctors, teaching fellows, and anyone with the legal power to give parking tickets.
3 Arrow shirts were a popular brand of clothing, despite offering unsatisfactory protection from actual arrows.
4 Gil Thorp was a long-running sports comic strip that sometimes touched on sensitive issues such as steroids, teen pregnancy, and how there’s no cool way to illustrate golf.
5 Hartz Mountain Industries is a company known for its large real estate holdings in New York and New Jersey, paradoxically implying that people still want to own land in the place they filmed Jersey Shore.
IV
Finders Keepers, Finders Weepers
After three days of hard riding that had put many a furlong between them and the Black Riders, the weary boggies came at last to the low kneehills which surrounded the valley of Riv’n’dell with a natural wall that protected it from occasional marauders too stupid or small to scale the sheer knolls and mounds. But their sure-footed mounts easily overcame these obstacles with short, heart-stopping hops, and in no time Frito and his companions had reached the summit of the last hillock and looked down on the orange roofs and cupolas of the elfish ranchellas. Urging on their panting ruminants, they galloped down the winding corduroy road that led to the dwellings of Orlon.1
It was late in the gray fall afternoon when the procession of sheepback riders rode into Riv’n’dell, led by Garfinkel astride his magnificent woolly stallion, Anthrax. An ill wind was blowing, and granite hailstones were falling from brooding clouds. As the party drew rein in front of the main lodge, a tall elf robed in finest percale and wearing bucks of blinding whiteness stepped onto the porch and greeted them.
“Welcome to the Last Homely House East of the Sea and Gift Shoppe,” he said. “Barca-Loungers in every room.”
Garfinkel and the tall elf thumbed their noses in the ancient salute of their race and exchanged greetings in elvish. “A syanon esso decca hi hawaya,” said Garfinkel, lightly springing from his animal.
“O movado silvathin nytol niceta-seeya,” replied the tall elf; then turning to Stomper he said: “I am Orlon.”
“Arrowroot son of Arrowshirt, at your service,” said Stomper, dismounting clumsily.
“And these?” said Orlon, pointing to the four boggies asleep on their dormant mounts.
“Frito and his companions, boggies from the Sty,” said Stomper. At the mention of his name, Frito gurgled loudly and fell off his sheep, and the Ring dropped out of his clothes, and rolled to Orlon’s feet. One of the sheep trotted up, licked it, and turned into a fire hydrant.
“Oog,” mumbled Orlon, and staggered inside. Garfinkel followed him into the little building, and a stream of low elvish followed. Arrowroot stood listening for a moment, then went around to Spam, Moxie, and Pepsi and woke them up with a series of finger jabs and pivot kicks. Frito retrieved the Ring and slipped it into his pocket. “So this is Riv’n’dell,” he said, rubbing his eyes with wonder as he looked at the strange elvish houses of prestressed gingerbread and ferrocandy.
“Look, Master Frito,” said Spam, pointing up the road. “Elves, lots of ’em. Ooooo, I must be dreaming. I wish the old Fatlip could see me now.”
“I wish I were dead,” whined Pepsi.
“So do I,” said Moxie.
“May the good fairy what sits in the sky grant yer ev’ry wish,” said Spam.
“Where is Goodgulf, I wonder?” wondered Frito.
Garfinkel strode back out onto the porch and produced a small tin whistle on which he blew a single, earsplitting, flat note, whereupon the sheep wandered aimlessly away.
“Magical,” sighed Spam.
“Follow me,” said Garfinkel, and he led Stomper and the boggies along a narrow muddy path which wound through clumps of flowering rhodogravure bushes and towering shoe trees. As he walked along, Frito smelled an evanescent fragrance of new-mown hay mingled with bleach and mustard, and from afar off he heard the delicate, heartbreaking twangs of a mouth harp and a few shreds of an elvish song:
“Row, row, row your elebethiel saliva githiel
Mann a fubar lothario syzygy snafu
O bring back my sucaryl Penna Ariz Fla mass.”
At the end of the path stood a small bungalow made of polished Joyvah Halvah and surrounded by a bed of glass flowers. Garfinkel turned the door’s all-day sucker and motioned the party inside. They found themselves in a large room which entirely filled the little house. There were a great many beds arranged around the walls, all of which looked as though they had been recently slept in by perverted kangaroos, and in the corners were a few odd chairs and tables which showed quite clearly the hand, and foot, of the elvish craftsmen. In the center of the room was a large table littered with the remnants of a violent game of three-pack canasta and several bowls of artificial fruit which couldn’t have been mistaken for the real thing at fifty meters. These Moxie and Pepsi immediately ate.
“Make yourself at home,” said Garfinkel, as he left. “Checkout time is three o’clock.”
Stomper slumped heavily into a chair, which folded up under him with a muffled crack.
• • •
Garfinkel was not gone more than five minutes when there came a knock at the door, and Spam went, rather irritably, to answer it. “It had better be food,” he mumbled, “ ’cause I’m gonna eat it.”
He opened the door with a jerk, revealing a mysterious stranger in a long gray cape and hood, wearing thick, black eyeglasses with a false rubber nose quite unconvincingly dangling from the bridge. The dark figure had a cardboard mustache, a dust mop wig, and a huge, hand-painted tie with a picture of an elf-maiden. In his left hand was a mashie niblick, and on his feet he wore shower clogs. He was puffing a fat cigar.
Spam reeled back in astonishment, and Stomper, Moxie, Pepsi, and Frito cried in unison, “Goodgulf!”
The old man shuffled in, discarding his disguises to reveal the familiar faith healer and bunco artist. “Lo, it is I,” admitted the Wizard, dispiritedly plucking a few strings out of his hair. With that he went around and shook all their hands very hard, shocking them with the little electric buzzer he invariably carried concealed in his palm.
“Well, well,” said Goodgulf, “here we all are again.”
“I’d sooner be in a dragon’s colon,” said Frito.
“I trust you still have it,” said Goodgulf, eyeing Frito.
“Do you mean the Ring?”
“Silence,” commanded Goodgulf in a loud voice. “Speak not of the Great Ring here or anywhere. If Sorhed’s spies discovered that you, Frito Bugger, hailing from the Sty, had the One Ring, all would be lost. And his spies are everywhere. The Nine Black Riders are abroad again, and there are those who claim to have seen the Seven Santinis, the Six Danger Signs, and the entire Trapp family, including the dog. Even the walls have ears,” he said, pointing to two huge lobes which were protruding from behind the mantelpiece.
“Is there no hope?” gasped Frito. “Is nowhere safe?”
“Who can know?” said Goodgulf, and a shadow seemed to pass over his face. “I would say more,” he said, “but a shadow seems to have passed over my face,” and with that he fell strangely silent.
Frito began to weep, and Stomper leaned forward and, putting his hand reassuringly on Frito’s shoulder, said, “Fear not, dear boggie, I will be with you all the way, no matter what may befall.”
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“Same here,” said Spam, and fell asleep.
“Us too,” said Moxie and Pepsi, yawning.
Frito remained inconsolable.
• • •
When the boggies awoke from their nap, Goodgulf and Stomper were gone, and the moon was shining fuzzily through the taffy windows. They had finished eating the curtains and were starting in on the lamp shades when Garfinkel returned, clad in finest cheesecloth, and led them down to the lodge building they had seen when they first arrived. It was large and brightly lit, and the night was filled with the brouhaha from within. As they approached, there came a silence, and then the plaintive, blackboard-scraping shriek of a nose flute pierced the air.
“They’re giving a pig a rough time of it in there,” said Spam, blocking his ears.
“Hush,” said Frito, and a voice rose in song, filling the boggies with a vague sense of nausea.
“A Unicef clearasil
Gibberish ’n’ drivel
O Mennen mylar muriel
With a hey derry turn gardol
O Yuban necco glamorene?
Enden nytol, vaseline!
Sing hey nonny nembutal.”
With a last twittering wail, the music died away, and half a dozen stunned birds plopped heavily to the ground in front of Frito.
“What was that?” asked Frito.
“It is an ancient lament in the tongue of the Auld Elves,” sighed Garfinkel. “It tells of Unicef and his long and bitter search for a clean restroom. ‘Are there no facilities here?’ he cries. ‘Is there no washroom?’ No one seems to know.”
So said Garfinkel and led the boggies into the House of Orlon. They found themselves in a long, high-raftered hall down the center of which ran an endless table. At one end was a huge oak mantelpiece and from high above hung brass chandeliers in which fine earwax candles spluttered brightly. Along the table sat the usual flotsam and jetsam of Lower Middle Earth; elves, fairies, Martians, several frogs, dwarves, gnomes, a few token men, a handful of bugbears, several trolls wearing sunglasses, a couple of goblins the Christian Scientists had worked over, and a dragon who had gotten fed up.
At the head of the table sat Orlon and the Lady Lycra robed in cloth of dazzling whiteness and brightness. Dead they looked, and yet it was not so, for Frito could see their eyes shining like wet mushrooms. Bleached was their hair so that it shone like goldenrod, and their faces were as bright and fair as the surface of the moon. All about them zircons, garnets, and lodestones flashed like stars. On their heads were silken lamp shades and on their brows were written many things, both fair and foul, such as “Unleash Chiang Kai-shek”2 and “I love my wife, but oh, you kid.” Asleep they were.
To the left of Orlon sat Goodgulf in a red fez, revealed as a 32nd degree Mason and Honorary Shriner, and to his right sat Stomper, clad in the white Gene Autry suit of a Ranger. Frito was shown to a seat about halfway down the table between an unusually deformed dwarf and an elf who smelled like a bird’s nest, and Moxie and Pepsi were sent to a small table in a corner with the Easter Bunny and a couple of tooth fairies.
As with most mythical creatures who live in enchanted forests with no visible means of support, the elves ate rather frugally, and Frito was a little disappointed to find heaped on his plate a small mound of ground nuts, bark, and dirt. Nevertheless, like all boggies, he was capable of eating anything he could Indian-wrestle down his throat and rather preferred dishes that didn’t struggle too much, since even a half-cooked mouse can usually beat a boggie two falls out of three. No sooner had he finished eating than the dwarf sitting to his right turned to him and proffered an extremely scaly hand in greeting. It’s at the end of his arm, thought Frito, nervously shaking it, it’s got to be a hand.
“Gimlet, son of Groin, your obedient servant,” said the dwarf, bowing to reveal a hunchback. “May you always buy cheap and sell dear.”
“Frito, son of Dildo, yours,” said Frito in some confusion, racking his brains for the correct reply. “May your hemorrhoids shrink without surgery.”
The dwarf looked puzzled but not displeased. “Then you are the boggie of whom Goodgulf spoke, the Ringer?”
Frito nodded.
“Do you have it with you?”
“Would you like to see it?” asked Frito politely.
“Oh, no thanks,” said Gimlet, “I had an uncle who had a magic tie clip and one time he sneezed and his nose fell off.”
Frito nervously touched a nostril.
“Excuse the interruption,” said the elf on his left, spitting accurately into the dwarf’s left eye, “but I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation with Gabby Hayes. Are you in fact the boggie with the bijou?”
“I am,” said Frito and sneezed violently.
“Allow me,” said the elf, proffering Gimlet’s beard to Frito, who was by now sneezing uncontrollably. “I am Legolam, of the Elves of Northern Weldwood.”
“Elf-dog,” hissed Gimlet, retrieving his beard.
“Pig of a dwarf,” suggested Legolam.
“Toymaker.”
“Gold-digger.”
“Flit.”
“Wart.”
“Wouldn’t you like to hear a joke or a song or something?” said Frito, becoming alarmed. “It seems there was this wandering dragon, and he comes to this farmhouse and the farmer—”
“A song,” agreed Gimlet and Legolam.
“Of course,” said Frito, and desperately trying to recall some of Dildo’s doggerel, he began to sing in a squeaky voice:
“A King of Elves there was of old,
Saranrap by name,
Who slew the Narcs at Mellowmarsh
And Sorhed’s host did tame.
And with him marched the stubby dwarves
Drafted from their mines,
But when the fearsome Battle raged
They hid behind the lines.
Sing: Clearasil, metrecal, lavoris in chorus
They hid behind the lines!
Angered was the mighty King
About to raise the dickens,
‘Just let me get my hands,’ quoth he,
‘On those half-pint chickens!’
Fearful were the chicken-Dwarves,
But mickle crafty, too.
King Yellowbac, their skins to save,
The elves did try to woo.
Sing: Twist-a-cap, reynoldswrap, gardol and duz
The elves he tried to woo!
‘If you doubt our loyalty,’
Yello told the King,
‘Take this gift, a dwarfish sword
That packs a mighty sting.
‘Clearasil, it’s called by name,’
The clever Dwarf spoke on,
‘Take this bribe, and let us let
Bygones be bygone.’
Sing: Cadillac, pickapack, Edsel and Coke
Bygones be bygone.
‘I accept this wondrous gift
And think you Dwarves are tops,’
Said he, as he took the sword
And smote him in the chops.
And since that day it’s said by all
In ballad, lay, and poem,
‘Only trust an elf or dwarf
As far as you can throw ’em!’
Sing: Oxydol, geritol, wheaties, and Trix.
As far as you can throw ’em!”
Just as Frito finished, Orlon suddenly roused himself and signaled for silence. “Bingo in the Elf Lounge,” he said, and the feast ended.
• • •
Frito was making his way to the table where Moxie and Pepsi were sitting when a bony hand reached out of a potted palm and grasped his shoulder. “Come with me,” said Goodgulf, brushing a frond aside, and led the surprised boggie down the hall and into a small room almost entirely filled by a huge glass-topped table. Orlon and Stomper had already taken seats, and as he and Goodgulf sat down Frito was amazed to see his dinner companions Gimlet and Legolam enter and seat themselves on opposite sides of the table. They were quickly followed by a he
avyset man in iridescent pegged trousers and sharply pointed shoes. Last of all came a small figure in a loud shirt smoking a foul elvish cigar and carrying a Scrabble board.
“Dildo!” cried Frito.
“Ah, Frito my lad,” said Dildo, slapping Frito heavily on the back, “so you made it after all. Well, well, well.” Orlon held out a moist palm, and Dildo rummaged in his pockets and pulled out a wad of crumpled bills.
“Two, wasn’t it?” he said.
“Ten,” said Orlon.
“So it was, so it was,” said Dildo, and dropped the bills in the elf’s hand.
“It’s been so long since the party,” said Frito. “What have you been doing?”
“Not much,” said the old boggie. “A little Scrabble, a little pederasty. I’m retired, you see.”
“But what is this all about? Who are the Black Riders, and what do they want with me? And what has the Ring got to do with it?”
“Much and little, more or less, dear boggie,” explained Orlon. “But all in good time. This Great Caucus has been called to answer such questions and others, but for now I will say only that there are a-many things amiss afoot, alas.”
“No lie,” said Goodgulf gravely. “The Nameless No-No is spreading again, and the time has come to act. Frito, the
Ring.”
Frito nodded and drew from his pocket the paper-clip chain, link by link. With a short toss, he threw the fatal trinket onto the table, where it landed with a tinny jing.
Orlon gasped. “The Magic Dingus,” he cried.
“What proof is there that this is the Ring?” asked the man with the pointed shoes.
“There are many signs which can be read by the wise, Bromosel,”3 announced the Wizard. “The compass, the whistle, the magic decoder—they’re all here. And there is the inscription:
“Grundig blaupunkt luger frug
Watusi snarf wazoo!
Nixon4 dirksen nasahist
Rebozo boogaloo.”
Goodgulf’s voice had become harsh and distant. An ominous black cloud filled the room. Frito gagged on the thick oily smoke.
“Was that necessary?” asked Legolam, kicking the Wizard’s still-belching smoke grenade out the door.
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