The Disappearing Dwarf

by James P. Blaylock

  ‘She moves quicker than you’d think,’Jonathan observed when Miles caught up to them.

  ‘Uncommonly so,’ Miles agreed.

  ‘I hope she stops at the inn,’ Bufo said. ‘She’s got Sikorsky written all over her.’

  Gump laughed a little, probably happy that Bufo had relaxed a bit about getting pitched out of the inn. Nobody laughed much though. They walked on in silence for a ways, convincing themselves that old women were a common enough thing to come upon in any land, Balumnia included. It seemed to Jonathan that perhaps they were a bit overcommon.

  They trudged along for another hour, purposefully forgetting the old woman and her cat. Jonathan brought up his log-raft idea again and it was discussed fairly thoroughly; however it struck them as they walked along that they lacked rope and tools and that it would be a powerfully wet time fetching those logs out of midriver. Who was to say what lay ahead of them, either on the road or on the river. They might crest the next hill and find themselves looking down on the Tweet River itself. There might be rapids along the river, or waterfalls or locks or just about anything. They might well spend a day building a raft by the riverside as Squire Myrkle tramped along the highroad above them. Anything might happen. The raft idea, then, was abandoned.

  By afternoon the road became hilly. They seemed to be climbing much more often than they were descending, and the river to the left fell away into a deep canyon and disappeared from view. From atop one little hill they could see a wide slash a quarter of a mile east that must have been the canyon through which the river ran. The road seemed pretty much to be winding round in a wide arc in that general direction, so the Professor announced that it was likely that they’d meet up with the river once again, and not too much farther along the line. It still seemed reasonable, or at least possible, that the river they followed would flow eventually into the great Tweet River, so they were anxious not to be too far removed from it.

  Late in the afternoon they were still wandering through hilly country. Once the road curved along and ran for a ways beside a deep gorge through which their river rushed along, tumbling wildly over stones and making Jonathan thankful that he hadn’t insisted on the raft idea. Then the road angled away again, across miles of meadows crisscrossed by indifferently kept stone walls. Stands of oak dotted the meadows and shaded groups of lackadaisical cows. Jonathan kept a sharp eye peeled for shepherds or farmers or fence menders or anyone who might advise them of the whereabouts of the Tweet River. After all, such a river, which was reputed to be so vast, would have to be widely known. So widely known, in fact, that to profess their ignorance of it would make the company immediately suspect. But the droopy-eyed cattle seemed to be taking care of themselves, for between eleven and four o’clock, the company passed no one along the road.

  At four, however, as the five of them labored up a particularly steep hill, discussing the likelihood of their finding a tavern in time for supper, they saw someone at the summit, slouching along in a sort of head-bobbing, carefree fashion. The man was obviously on a tramp, for he had a bundle over his shoulder and he wore far too many clothes, given the pleasant weather. He waved at the company almost as soon as he was visible on the road – a wild windmill wave that went on about three or four rotations more than was necessary. He wore a billed cap turned sideways on his head and yanked down low over his forehead so that his hair was shoved out away at right angles like the bristles of a sprung broom.

  Gump winked at the rest of them and waved two fingers as a sort of high sign.

  ‘Wait a minute!’ Bufo warned, realizing that Gump intended to undertake the detective role once again. But Gump waved him silent and, in an altogether innocent and nonchalant manner, hailed the approaching stranger who responded by waving wildly at them once again – so wildly that Jonathan feared it was some kind of signal and he looked behind him down the road. But the road was empty; it was just the man’s energetic greeting.

  Jonathan was dismayed to see that the man’s eyes seemed to be whirling like tops. He understood that to be a bad sign.

  ‘Good day, sir!’ said Gump enthusiastically.

  ‘Allo, allo, allo!’ the tramp replied, grinning as if the very idea of their meeting along the road was tremendously amusing. ‘Going my way!’ he asked, cocking his head to one side and stretching his eyes open incredibly wide.

  ‘What way’s that?’ Gump asked, seeking, no doubt, to humor the man.

  ‘That-a-way,’ was the answer, and he held his hands together in such a way that his various thumbs and index fingers managed to point, at once, in four opposite directions. ‘I go all over!’ he said wildly. Then, as soon as Gump started to speak, he shouted, ‘Do you?’ He laughed like a wildman.

  Jonathan could see that Bufo was working himself up fairly thoroughly over the whole affair. He seemed to be itching to have a go at being a detective himself. ‘We’re looking for a man,’ Bufo began, throwing caution to the winds. ‘A man named Squire Myrkle.’

  ‘Mirtle?’ asked the tramp.

  ‘Myrkle,’ Bufo repeated. ‘A big man. Very big.’

  ‘Ah, a large one!’ The tramp nodded shrewdly. ‘A big Myrkle.’

  ‘Just so,’ said Gump, shoving his way back in now that they were getting somewhere. ‘Big around as a barrel.’

  ‘Like this?’ the wildman asked, holding his arms in a circle so as to indicate the possible circumference of a barrel.

  ‘Just like that. And about my height. And with a head that comes to something of a point on top.’

  ‘Like so!’ the man shouted happily, making a point atop his own head with his hands while balancing the stick from the bundle under his chin.

  ‘That’s it exactly, and he walked like this.’ Gump strode somberly about the circle, mimicking the Squire’s shuffling pyramid gait, arms hovering in the air and rotating circuitously.

  ‘Like this,’ the wildman said, laying his bundle on the roadway and following Gump’s example.

  ‘That’s it!’ cried Gump. ‘That’s the Squire to a tee. You’ve seem him then!’

  ‘Who?’ The man continued to creep about in the manner of the Squire.

  ‘Squire Myrkle!’ Bufo shouted, heating up. ‘Have you seen the blasted Squire!’

  ‘Big man?’

  ‘Big as an elemumph!’ Bufo shouted, flying into a rage. ‘Big as a hippogumby!’

  ‘Didn’t see him,’ the poor man said, leaving off his capering.

  ‘Where is the Tweet River, my good fellow?’ Miles finally asked in a friendly sort of way.

  The man perked up amazingly. ‘Tweet?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Miles said. ‘The Tweet River.’

  ‘Like a bird?’ the man asked, slowly starting to resume a very satisfactory Squire imitation. He swung his arms slowly. Then, birdlike, he flapped for a few moments saying. ‘Tweet, tweet.’

  ‘Blazes!’ Bufo shouted.

  ‘We’d better report this to Sikorsky,’ Jonathan said to the Professor. The conversation, like the one with the innkeeper, had deteriorated, and it had occurred to Jonathan that mention of Sikorsky would put a fitting cap on it. The Professor apparently thought so too, for he laughed and nodded at Jonathan’s little lark. The wildman, however, flapping there, ceased abruptly. He either didn’t see anything funny in Jonathan’s mention of the fabled Sikorsky or else he’d grown suddenly tired of the interrogation. He gathered up his bundle from the roadway, twisted the bill of his cap round to the other side of his head, and ran off down the hill, never looking back.

  9

  The Disappearing Dwarf

  Miles scratched his chin. Bufo and Gump were dumbfounded. Jonathan and the Professor were pretty much the same way. ‘Well I’m a codfish,’ the Professor said as they stood and watched the fellow make away. ‘What do you suppose set him off?’

  ‘Sikorsky?’ Jonathan asked.

  ‘That seems unlikely, doesn’t it?’ Miles said. ‘Unless this Sikorsky is some sort of local baron or governor or some such thing. Perh
aps we should use his name a bit more circumspectly.’

  ‘Perhaps so,’ Jonathan agreed. It suddenly occurred to him that a man’s name and an ape suit had a good deal in common. Both seemed to have the power of setting people to flight. He was happy, in the light of that realization, that he and the Professor had left their suits at Myrkle Hall. Why bundle the things around Balumnia when the mere mention of Sikorsky’s ridiculous name would have an identical effect?

  They trudged the last twenty-five yards to the crest of the hill, Bufo and Gump muttering darkly about the impossibility of being even a moderately successful detective in a land such as this. Jonathan had to admit that they had a point, all things considered, and he was on the verge of suggesting that they start searching out a place to eat. They had a bit of cheese left over from their breakfast, but the stuff had been riding in their knapsacks throughout the hot afternoon, and was, by then, sort of soft and oily and had begun to smell like the bubbling pools in the swamps below Hightower.

  Jonathan was in the act of tossing scraps of cheese to a group of interested birds when they crested the hill. A cool wind ruffled his hair, a wind saturated with a familiar musty, weedy smell, a river smell. There, below them, winding slowly along the floor of a river valley that must have been twenty-five miles across, he saw a tremendous, slow, and ancient river, a river that made the old Oriel seem like a trout stream. In the still afternoon sun, the surface of the river was placid, and the water looked as still and muddy as a rain puddle in a field. Willows and cottonwoods and great bent pepper trees grew along the banks and out into the water. Downriver about a half mile was the mouth of the stream they’d been following. Clutches of logs had floated out onto the big river and collected in log jams. A half dozen men cavorted about on the logs, tying clusters together. Others worked on shore, winching the clusters in. The blunt cone of the mill incinerator smoked listlessly beyond, white smoke and ash drifting forth and hovering about in the air over the mill, dissipating slowly.

  Upriver some quarter mile lay a good-sized village, spread out along the bank and up the slopes of the hills behind it. A dozen docks ran out into the river, docks heaped with crates and nets and lumber. A long open market flanked the road as it ran along the waterfront, and it looked as if about half the village was tramping up and down between the stalls of produce and fish. The village itself was a pleasant confusion of white clapboard houses and picket fences and dirt roads.

  Moored at one dock was a great steamship with a wide paddlewheel at the stern. So it was toward that dock that the five of them trudged. They passed along the road a sign that said TWEET RIVER VILLAGE and another sign that pointed downriver and said LANDSEND – 125 MILES. That seemed to answer a few pressing questions. They agreed almost at once that they’d try to book passage on the riverboat if it was bound for Landsend. By boat, it wasn’t so very far. By foot, however, it was five or six days worth of tiresome walking. Jonathan, in fact, had begun to reevaluate the wisdom of his uncle’s walking tours. There seemed to be a vast difference between walking for sport or romance and walking for the purpose of arriving at a destination. The first had a comfortable poke-along spirit to it; the second had the flavor of work. It made it doubly irritating to realize that the destination, finally, was unknown; that it was just possible – quite possible – that no destination existed, or that the destination had been passed and missed yesterday afternoon and that all further wandering would be purposeless and random. And the truth of it was that there was nothing to indicate that they were an inch or an hour closer to finding the Squire there above Tweet River Village than they had been when flying in the airship high in the White Mountains. At least aboard the steamship they’d have the advantage of being borne along; they’d gain some sort of direction, and that appealed, apparently, to ail five of them.

  They were in luck. The Jamoca Queen sailed the following morning for Landsend and wasn’t near full of passengers. The captain seemed fairly surprised that the five of them had any interest in making such a voyage; and after leading them to four adjacent cabins in the middle deck, he suggested they spend the night aboard. ‘She sails at dawn,’ he advised them, peering at them in a no-nonsense manner, ‘come what may.’

  ‘What do you expect?’ Jonathan asked, surprised at the odd statement.

  ‘Nothing,’ the captain replied. ‘Don’t pay any heed to rumors, lads. Rumors never sank a ship of mine.’ With that he turned and clumped away toward the bridge, shaking his head.

  ‘What in the world was all that about?’ Jonathan asked.

  ‘Who knows,’ the Professor replied. ‘I was afraid for a moment that you were going to mention Sikorsky. The captain looks like the type who’d get a bang out of that sort of thing.

  ‘I thought about it,’ Jonathan said, ‘but I had the same impression. I didn’t want to land us in the river. We’d best go easy around here.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Miles agreed, choosing one of the cabins. Bufo and Gump chose another, and Jonathan and the Professor took the third and the fourth.

  When they met on deck a half-hour later, the sun was disappearing upriver. It seemed to be immense, and when it began to sink in the west it fell amazingly quickly, disappearing bit by bit in an orange shimmer beyond the broad river. For the space of a long minute the river water blazed with reflected sunlight, then cooled and dimmed to green as the tiptop crescent of the dipping sun was swallowed up by the horizon.

  Night seemed to be falling almost as fast, so the company clattered down the gangplank and headed toward town in search of an inn. They passed the now silent open market where most of the carts and stands were canvassed and shuttered. A few greengrocers were messing with their produce, and two or three tired-looking women towed empty wagons away into the evening. The deserted market had a desolate air to it, made more so by the crying of birds that stalked along, pecking at bits of fruit and fish that littered the roadway. A musty wind rose off the river smelling wet and muddy, and on the wind, cool and gray, was just the first hint of a fog. It promised to be a dark night, and the five travelers were in no mood to tarry there in the deserted street.

  A block up, however, out of sight of the river, things were a bit different. Light spilled from open doorways and the streets were full of people idling on the sidewalks and hurrying in and out of taverns and cafés. Piano music and smoke rolled out of one dark café that had a great sign hanging in the window that promised Best food in town. The ‘in town’ had been crossed out and beneath it was scribbled the word, ‘anywhere’, and then that too had been lined through. ‘Best food’ seemed, by itself, to pretty much make the point, Jonathan supposed. The anywhere part was superfluous.

  On the chance that the sign was at least partly accurate, they crossed toward the café, the Professor pointing out that the music was a bit too loud for comfort and that noise had an adverse affect on digestion. Miles agreed, but Bufo and Gump, claiming to be hungry as hogs, insisted at least on reading the menu.

  They weren’t halfway across the street, however, when through the smoky doorway tumbled a ragged-looking lumberjack. With a wild shout he sprang to his feet and raged back inside, shouting something about filthy cheats and scum. Bufo and Gump decided that the sign probably was wholly inaccurate anyway, like those signs that advertise home-cooked meals, and they gave the place a wide berth and steered toward a less active tavern a ways up the street.

  A tendril of fog overtook them about then, curling up the road on the late evening breeze and followed by wisps of the stuff that obscured the streetlamps and the doorways and muffled the laughter and the music and the noise from the taverns. They stopped before a tavern called, mysteriously, THE OLD SHADES, which promised entertainment along with the food. A ragged but nicely gaudy poster advertising a stage magician was glued to the window. Zippo, Wizard Extraordinaire announced the poster, which showed a picture of the extraordinary Zippo shoving curlicue swords through a woman sleeping in a pine box.

  Miles was disgusted by the pos
ter and by the very idea of parlor magic, but it was just the sort of thing that Jonathan liked. The more wild and unlikely the poster, in fact, the cheaper and tawdrier the colors, the more it appealed to him. It was the menu, finally, advertising gumbos and fried river squid and lime-juice oysters on the half shell that persuaded Miles to follow the rest of them inside.

  The tables were set up before a stage that was hung with a weirdly woven tapestry of a crumbling palace. Before it lay a long line of tumbled skeletons that had apparently once stood in a file like a line of dominoes and had been laid to waste in the same style. Each lay with a look of mixed horror and amazement on its face, staring sightlessly toward a hooded figure outlined in a lit window of the palace before them. The tapestry gave Jonathan the creeps, but he had to admit that it was just the sort of thing to decorate a magic show.

  When their food was served, it was just about as marvelous as the scene on the tapestry. Jonathan had a big bowl of dark, steaming gumbo with weird sea creatures – mussels and oysters and grinning shrimp and kelp crab – looking out of it. It reminded him of a boiled tide pool. Miles had a platter of fried baby river squid – rubbery-looking beasts with haunting eyes, all of them swimming in lemon and butter. The Professor sat before a mess of unidentifiable tentacles and ribby-looking items on a bed of rice. Bufo and Gump, giggling and pointing at the various peculiarities, had ordered steak and fried potatoes.

  ‘No surprises in steak and potatoes,’ Jonathan said, trying, more than anything else, to convince himself that he’d been wise to order the local specialty.

  ‘You can say that again,’ Bufo said slicing out a big hunk of rare steak. ‘What’s that devil there?’ He pointed with his fork at the business end of a sea cucumber that protruded from Jonathan’s soup. ‘Looks like trouble to me.’

  ‘Not a bit of it.’ Jonathan assured him, gamely tying into the thing. ‘Absolute delight, actually.’ He washed the morsel down quickly with a swallow of ale. Bufo didn’t appear to be convinced.