The Disappearing Dwarf

by James P. Blaylock

  Jonathan couldn’t tear his eyes from the detestable thing. He watched as it wavered and shimmered for a moment, as had the goblin jewels in the treasure chests. As he watched it metamorphosed into the girl from the house in the woods, curled up as if asleep on the floor. Then, after the space of half a minute, it shimmered and faded and was gone altogether. Nothing was left but the echoing ring of dry laughter that hung in the air like dust.

  Ahab looked up at Jonathan as if expecting an explanation. Jonathan didn’t have one. Once again he’d gone out on the hunt and found that it was himself who was pursued. The idea of chasing Selznak appeared suddenly ludicrous to him, and he made up his mind to retrace his steps and find the Professor and the rest. Then they’d search for Escargot, if he hadn’t already been released, and together they’d find the Dwarf and deal with him. The idea was appealing. He’d storm back through the room with the pentagram and reduce the goats heads to powder. He was determined. He stepped across, his club over his shoulder, and found the door had been locked. He twisted and kicked it but nothing happened. He had no choice, finally, but to goon.

  In the room where the witch had stood was a row of long windows with a view of the dark forest beyond. Dusty, cobwebby furniture sat about as if it had been waiting for a hundred years or so for someone to come along and make use of it. One wall was ornately paneled with old, wormy, dark wood. At the far end an enormous stuffed chair stood beside a bookcase filled with dark, ancient books. One lay open on a low table beneath a gas lamp. Jonathan felt the base of the lamp and jerked his hand back in surprise at the heat. It must have been burning even while he and Ahab searched in the dark room for a door.

  There didn’t seem to be any time for hesitation. The Dwarf might well just be slinking away, perhaps having looked up some grim, arcane bit of evil magic. Jonathan pulled the door open and found another hallway, a short corridor that ended at a window twenty feet or so farther on. Two iron-studded doors fronted it on the left. It had to have been through one of these doors that the Dwarf had fled. The latch on the first door turned easily, and Jonathan pushed into a room that at first seemed entirely bare. But as light from the corridor filtered in and chased off some of the gloom, he could see that although the room was indeed bare of furniture, it wasn’t bare in any other sense. The stone walls, windowless on all sides, were intricately carved. Strange runes and symbols covered the walls: peculiar twisted faces, sweeping oak trees out of which sailed great flights of bats and which half hid a thousand grinning goblins, numberless indistinguishable carvings muted in shadow.

  Jonathan had to satisfy himself that there were no other exits. He intended only to have a quick look about then leave, off to investigate the second room. He found, however, that doing so wasn’t quite as easy as that. The carvings seemed somehow to contain countless mysteries. As he stared at them, his eyes picking out first one then another and then another of their secrets, he felt as if he were staring into a prodigiously deep and very clear tidepool, a pool that ran off into the depths of the sea – that was the sea – and that hid great mysteries among waving eel grass and scuttling crabs and slowly creeping snails. He felt as if he were tumbling forward into a dream chasm, spinning away into the heart of that mystery, engulfed by it.

  Then he felt a tugging on his leg, and there was old Ahab, not half as concerned with mysteries as was Jonathan and wanting nothing more than to be off. Jonathan saw, as he turned to leave, a pair of eyes carved dead center in the wall opposite the door, staring at him – the same sort of eyes, strangely, that had been tattooed onto Selznak’s hand. They seemed more than mere carvings, as if they were watching him, studying him. When one of the eyes winked slowly, then sprang open again, Jonathan dashed out into the hallway, Ahab at his heels. He was possessed by the certainty, or the hope at least, that he’d stood about in the weird room too long and that his eyes, befuddled by the carvings, had begun to play tricks on him.

  He hadn’t any real desire to explore the final room, both because he suspected that it too would be filled with strange magic and because Selznak had undoubtedly entered it. Jonathan knew that he must have come by then to the rear of the castle. There could be no more rooms, no other hallways. Surely Selznak was behind the very door he found himself reaching for.

  He raised his club, set his feet, threw open the last door and was confronted with an empty room, a room which, like the last, had no second door. It was a high, domed room with a single great window in the top of the dome. Pointing out through the glass was a tremendous brass telescope. The walls all around were painted with moons and ringed planets and great twirling washes of stars. There was nothing strange or evil here – no winking faces or rotting heads, and no Selznak the Dwarf, either. Jonathan shut the door and walked back down the hall into the room with the books and the warm gas lamp. It struck him as impossible that the witch had been thumbing through books in Selznak’s library. He hadn’t any idea how witches passed their time, but he knew, somehow, that it wasn’t in casual reading. It must have been the Dwarf who had lit the lamp. If he hadn’t gone along to either of the far rooms, nor had returned the way he’d come, then he’d either gone out the window or exited through a door Jonathan couldn’t see, a hidden door.

  Selznak had never struck Jonathan as the sort who climbed in and out of windows. He never bothered with stealth, was too conceited for it. ‘Where’s the Dwarf?’ Jonathan whispered to Ahab, understanding, of course, that Ahab mightn’t understand a word of it. ‘Find Selznak!’ he whispered.

  Along with the sniffing Ahab, he went poking about at the old wormy panels that covered the wall next to the bookcase. He pushed on each and felt along edges for latches or buttons. He rapped here and there, supposing that he might hear some telltale hollow plunking. But nothing came of it.

  Ahab seemed far more interested in the bookcase. He stood before it growling a bit, like a dog debating with himself over which book he wanted to read next. Jonathan joined him, knowing that while Ahab seemed to have a natural affinity for books and had even gone as far as to have eaten the covers off a few in his younger days, he’d never been known to read any. His interest couldn’t be intellectual.

  Jonathan tugged on one wall of the case, but it seemed altogether solid. Then he pushed and pulled and opened the leaded doors. The books inside were very neatly ordered. In fact, the case was packed with them, the only gap being just wide enough to take the book that lay open on the table. As he looked at the gap and pondered, an idea popped into his head. He picked up the book and slid it back into its niche. There was the snapping sound of a latch releasing, the faint groaning of a spring, and the entire bookcase swung out on recessed hinges, nearly knocking Jonathan on the nose. He and Ahab slid through, and the bookcase swung shut with a click.

  They found themselves in a small dim corridor, about as wide as the bookcase. It led off into the darkness behind the rooms they’d been exploring. Jonathan set out after Ahab, groping for a ways down the dark tunnel. Thirty or forty steps along he came to a stairway, illuminated by light that shone through a vent of sorts in the wall of an adjacent room. He followed the stairs up and around and along another corridor, hurrying after Ahab and finding no other doors to interrupt his pursuit of the Dwarf.

  His steps echoed faintly off the stones, but that was something that couldn’t be avoided unless he took his shoes off and sneaked along in his stocking feet. Somehow that didn’t appeal to him. He was almost to a second stairway when he heard voices through a vent: a low demanding voice and another, higher and pleading.

  ‘I saw you steal it and run off,’ the low voice said. ‘Don’t deny it. Do you want more of this?’

  The high voice stuttered and gasped. ‘No, no! I took it. I admit I took it. I wanted to give it to, to what’s-his-name. The one with the dog.’

  ‘You’re a liar!’ the low voice growled, and there followed another hoot of pain. ‘You’re one of Selznak’s filthy cohorts. A magician! Hah! A juggler is more like it. A circus clown. A
geek. An entertainer of goblins and idiots!’

  Jonathan realized with a start that the high voice belonged to poor Zippo, who was being tormented by someone who very badly wanted the globe. A third voice piped in about then, farther off than the first two. ‘Are you still in there, Grandpa?’ it said.

  ‘That’s right,’ the low voice said cheerfully. ‘Mr Zippo and I are doing business. You just hold on. Mr Zippo is a powerfully slow talker, but I’m speeding him along a bit now.’ It was Escargot doing the speeding, bartering with Zippo for the globe.

  ‘My father will cook your goose!’ Zippo warned. ‘When he finds out you’re here, he’ll roast you over a fire. He’s on his way now with an army!’

  ‘An army! Your father wears pink shirts,’ Escargot said ungraciously. ‘He doesn’t care a bit about you. And even if he did, so what? Stealing that barge of strawberries from him was like snatching his hat. I would have sent my grandson to do it but I don’t want him involved in such triflings. I, however, haven’t any scruples left.’

  Zippo shouted once, as if his arm had been twisted. ‘I haven’t got it! Sikorsky has it. Selznak. Whatever his name is. He took it from me. I swear it!’

  There was silence for a moment. Then Escargot exploded. ‘Damn!’ A door slammed and footsteps died away. Jonathan winced once, thinking about poor Zippo. It was too bad that Escargot assumed Zippo to be Selznak’s minion. It was hardly a fair world, it seemed to Jonathan. He hurried up the stairs toward what must have been the upper recesses of the tower. The stairs wound around and around tiresomely and ended abruptly on a bit of landing and at another bookcase, identical to the one below – containing, in fact, what might easily have been the same books. Above the rows of books light shone through the slats of another vent, and along with the light came the sounds of far-off shouts and what sounded strangely like the clanging of steel on steel, of swordplay, possibly. Mixed in among it all was a low monotonous chanting and the smell of burning camphor and bay leaves.

  24

  On the Meadow

  Jonathan pushed a row of books to the rear of a shelf and climbed up, testing his weight for a moment before clambering farther. Atop the third shelf he was able to peer through the grillwork of the vent into the room beyond.

  It was a circular room, the room of a tower, with two great windows in it that Jonathan assumed faced the sea. The only thing he could see through them, however, was a patch of blue sky and the tail end of cloud fluff somewhere off over the ocean. In front of the windows, looking down onto the meadows below, stood Selznak the Dwarf. On a rickety table beside him smoked a pottery jar full of leaves. The Dwarf chanted over the jar, waving a hand at it and swirling smoke from the mouth of the jar up into the air in little wavy clouds.

  Next to the jar sat the Lumbog globe, catching the rays of afternoon sun through the window. The globe glowed in a dozen colors, seeming to race with light one moment, then fade and darken the next, almost as if it were slowly breathing there atop the table, waiting for Selznak to make use of it.

  A sudden trumpet blast echoed in from beyond the windows along with the sound of clattering hooves, then another trumpet blast and shouts. Almost at the same moment as the second sounding of the trumpet came a furious pounding on the oaken door of the circular room. Selznak didn’t seem to pay it any mind, he simply chanted a bit louder over the herbs as he pounded two or three times on the stone floor with his staff, scattering sparks at each thump.

  The smoke from the jar swirled thicker and spun slowly toward the ceiling, seeming to coagulate and compress. The shape of shoulders formed and then the rough semblance of a head, a head with wide empty eyes and an open mouth. Then the smoke undulated and dispersed, and Selznak dusted the jar with powders and struck the floor and chanted a bit louder. Again the smoke billowed. For a brief moment a wind blew through the room, ruffling Jonathan’s hair through the vents – a hot wind like the wind off a desert. Selznak’s robes swirled and danced, and he shaded his eyes with his free hand. The smoke hovered above its jar, unaffected by the wind, and it swirled and grew dense. The face appeared again, hooded, its eyes glowing this time like embers in a burned-down fire. Its mouth worked spasmodically, and it looked around itself as if anxious to be freed from its smoky bonds.

  Just then a smashing against the door made it shudder on its hinges. Then came another smashing – the sound of someone thudding against the oak with a battering ram. The face in the smoke paled, then reappeared.

  A shout outside the door – the Professor’s voice. ‘Again!’ he shouted. ‘Here by the latch!’ Then there was another tremendous slam. Chips of stone flew off the wall and the door shuddered and seemed to push in just a bit.

  Selznak picked the globe up from the table, dusting the jar one last time with his powders. He held the globe up in the rays of the sun and stared into it, gathering his robes about him and pushing his hat down over the top of his head.

  Jonathan leaped from the bookcase – nearly squashing Ahab, who stood waiting below – and began yanking out books. He couldn’t remember if the removed book in the case below had been on the fourth or the fifth shelf, so he pulled books as fast as he could, casting them behind him onto the stones.

  The sound of the pounding against the door continued, and Jonathan could hear the slow splintering of wood. He hadn’t any idea what sort of creature it was that Selznak was conjuring, but he was quite certain it was something that the Professor and whoever else was breaking through the door wouldn’t want to see. He was also certain that the demon was about all they would see, as Selznak would be long gone by then from the land of Balumnia.

  He jerked another book out and heard the click and screech of the latching mechanism. The bookcase turned slowly in on its hinge, and Jonathan stood ready to leap through the widening gap. Ahab had the same idea. He’d been cheated of the witch an hour before, and so he stood poised there, growling at the growing line of light, determined not to be cheated again.

  Ahab dashed through, Jonathan squeezing along behind and expecting to be whacked in the head with Selznak’s staff or turned to paste by a demon. Selznak shouted. Ahab barked. The door shivered under another blow and smashed in another inch before jamming to a stop. Jonathan leaped at Selznak, and the two of them went over in a heap of flailing arms and legs. Ahab raced around, alternately biting at the Dwarf and leaping at the smoky demon. Jonathan heard the crack of the Lumbog globe as it hit the floor and rolled. Selznak pushed at him and fought and kicked and then pulled his hat over Jonathan’s face.

  A sudden crash behind them was not the door being broken open, but rather the wooden table hitting the floor. The pottery jar shattered, spewing burning leaves onto Jonathan’s leg. The hot wind he’d felt through the grate whirled like a dust devil, and a thick, acrid stench filled the room, then just as quickly was gone. Jonathan yanked away the hat, lunged across and grabbed the globe from Selznak’s clutching hand, and pitched it through the window in a shower of breaking glass.

  Just then the door crashed open, and in rushed the Professor and Escargot followed by Dooly, Gump, Bufo, and the Squire. Bufo shouted, ‘Get him, Squire!’ Squire Myrkle piled on top of the spluttering Selznak and sat on his chest, leering into his face. He pulled the Dwarf’s stuffed newt from his coat and waved it at him. ‘Lizard, wizard, picklegizzard,’ he chanted, and squeezed on the newt, puffing a little cloud of white powder into the Dwarf’s face, sending him into a paroxysm of wild rage.

  Escargot shook Jonathan by the shoulder. ‘Where is it?’ he asked, half under his breath as if not wanting the Professor to hear. Jonathan nodded toward the window where twisted and broken lead hung with shards of glass. Escargot dashed from the room towing Dooly along behind. Selznak slept peacefully on the floor, looking for all the world as if he’d put his face in a flour bin.

  Trumpets blew again outside, prompting everyone to rush over to the window. A battle raged below. Goblins raced back and forth, pursued, Jonathan guessed, by the troops of Cap’n Binky and the S
trawberry Baron. And there, sure enough, mounted on a white horse and wearing an enormous cocked hat with a pink plume in it, sat the Baron in his ruffled shirt, shouting and pointing and spurring off into the trees after a little party of goblins.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ the Squire announced ponderously, squinting out the window at the fray. ‘We’ll eat something.’

  ‘Good idea,’ Bufo said. ‘What shall we have?’

  The Squire held the stuffed newt up and gave it a look. ‘This isn’t a cheese?’ he asked in a voice filled with the hope that Bufo would disagree.

  ‘No.’ Bufo confirmed. ‘It’s not a cheese. We’ll find a cheese.’

  But the Squire turned the newt in his hand as if suspecting that from another angle, from beneath perhaps, if might turn out to be a cheese after all.

  Selznak stirred on the floor, so the Squire wandered over to him and squeezed the newt into his face again, perching the thing thereafter across his nose and forehead.

  ‘That’s the Strawberry Baron,’ Gump reported, nodding down toward where the Baron had reappeared on his horse.

  ‘Zippo’s father,’ Jonathan told him.

  The Professor gave him an astonished look. ‘No?’ he said.

  For a fact. Zippo told me so himself.’

  The Squire seemed skeptical. ‘That man is a strawberry?’