The Elfin Ship

by James P. Blaylock

  There was almost no breeze at all until about nine o’clock in the morning when what wind there was turned round and blew downriver toward the sea. Even Dooly realized that a storm was brewing, for the wind smelled as if it were full of water, and off toward the White Mountains lightning arced out of the clouds every few minutes, though they were too far away for them to hear the thunder.

  Rain began to fall at about ten – big round drops that came sailing out of the gray sky to plop on the deck and on the roof of the cabin and form puddles and little streams running this way and that across the deck. There was not much running around and lashing things down since most of the cargo was stowed inside the cabin. Only the deck chairs were hauled inside.

  Jonathan and Dooly, both of whom rather liked rain, decided to continue pedaling in the hope that the rain would let up. The Professor ambled inside along with Escargot, apologizing for his rheumatism. It seemed great fun, at first, sailing along through the rain and watching the lightning flash in the misty distance. But when the first ball of hail hit Jonathan on the head, his mood changed a bit, especially since the hail balls were the size of big marbles. Though there was a canopy of sorts over the paddlewheel and its mechanisms, the hail came sailing and it bounced under the canopy and whacked Jonathan and Dooly on the head and back. They had to bury their faces in their arms during the first onslaught. Then, of course, they couldn’t see where they were going, so it made little sense to keep pedaling.

  As quickly as they could, they ran the raft up into the mouth of a little creek that emptied into Stooton Slough. The banks on either side were high and broke the wind, and there was such a tangle of underbrush and limbs that much of the rain was waylaid before it ever reached the raft. As Jonathan and Dooly pedaled in, Escargot popped out and tied the raft up fore and aft to twisted roots that jutted out of the bank. Dooly heaved an anchor overboard, but the water was so shallow that the anchor merely sat there as if wondering what to do, its length of line and chain still mostly heaped on the deck.

  They sat about in the cabin all day playing cards and drinking coffee and reading books. Jonathan made an effort to teach Dooly pinochle, but it was too much for him. They ended up playing Go Fishing instead, which is not a bad game at first but gets old after a half hour or so.

  The rain fell and the wind blew on and off through the afternoon, but it never turned bad enough so that they had to fear flooding or toppling trees. When the Professor began slicing up cabbages and boiling the corned beef for dinner, the four of them took a vote and decided to spend the night there in the slough, even though the rain had nearly fallen off and there were breaks in the clouds. They could have pushed on, but the few miles they’d travel before dark didn’t seem half worth the effort involved. The inside of the cabin was so cheery and warm by that time that the idea of venturing into the breezy drizzle outside was unthinkable.

  Escargot suggested that they eat dinner and then have a council of war to plan the siege of Hightower ridge. Both Jonathan and the Professor agreed, although Jonathan rather thought that any such siege was more Escargot’s business than it was his or the Professor’s. But the battle was obviously drawing nigh, and this was as good a time as any to make plans. All such plans are likely to go awry when the action heats up, but there is still a certain sense of security or purpose that goes with order and with planning.

  So they ate a very good early dinner, and they opened a few bottles of ale they’d laid away against just such an evening. The rain and the wind fell away, and it grew very still outside. Dooly observed that they were in the ‘eye of the hurricane’, but the Professor pointed out that there was no hurricane involved. Dooly concluded that they must be in some other kind of eye.

  If there was any moon at all it was hidden away behind the clouds that still covered most of the sky. Jonathan suspected that the night was going to be very dark indeed when it arrived.

  19

  Stooton Slough

  When dusk was just turning to night Jonathan and Dooly took a look outside and found that the creek, although muddy, hadn’t risen much at all. Dooly spotted a tangle of blackberry vines drooping over the bank, and he and Jonathan and Ahab took advantage of the last twenty minutes of daylight to pick a few quarts. A little trail ran along the bank and back up a wooded rise beyond, and Jonathan thought he could just see the corner of a cabin in the woods there a hundred yards or so beyond them. Dooly looked in that direction but said that he didn’t see anything and didn’t want to either.

  They decided to make a cobbler out of the blackberries later in the evening, so Jonathan set about washing the bugs out of them and picking through to find the green ones. There’s no use souring up a cobbler because you’re afraid to waste a few green berries.

  Finally the berries were cleaned, the dishes were washed, the cabin was neat as it had to be, and there was nothing left to do but read or engage in serious discussions – in councils of war, as it were. They thought about it for a moment and came to the conclusion that a council of war would go much better in an hour or two over a hot cobbler. The Professor offered the observation that reading was suspected by medical science to be a digestive aid, so each of them lit a pipe and lost himself in a book – each of them except Dooly. Dooly didn’t smoke a pipe, and instead of reading he plunked himself down at the table and began working on writing a book. He wasn’t sure what the book was going to be about, or at least that’s what he said, but he had the feeling that it was going to be good. He was suffering from inspiration, he said, just like Mr Bufo and Yellow Hat.

  Jonathan opened a G. Smithers and loaned a Glub Boomp to Escargot. It was an amazing thing to glance over toward Escargot’s bunk and see the business end of a pipe and an open book hovering about in the air. The Professor looked into one of the ponderous Tomes of Limpus and began almost at once to meditate deeply, looks of astonishment, puzzlement, horror and understanding popping up variously on his face. The inside of the cabin was silent as a clam within moments, the only sound being the scratching of Dooly’s pen on the page.

  For a half hour it remained so, everyone being pleasantly abandoned to his book. Professor Wurzle first broke the silence, standing up abruptly and asking, ‘What was that?’

  Jonathan started to say that he hadn’t heard anything, but only about half of it was out of his mouth when the Professor held his hand up and stopped him. They listened in silence for the space of ten seconds; then, very low, as if it were coming from somewhere distant, they heard the sound of weeping – an anguished, eerie sound that made Jonathan apprehensive. It stopped for a moment and then started again, a bit louder. It sounded nothing like the moaning of goblins, but more like a woman weeping over a lost child or a dead lover.

  Jonathan, Escargot, and the Professor stepped out onto the deck. Dooly volunteered to stand guard with Ahab inside. In the silent night air the weeping grew louder, more insistent. The forest roundabout was deadly still, and the faint glow in the sky did nothing to dispel the gloom.

  Jonathan remembered having seen what he supposed to be the wall of a cabin in the woods, and he jumped across to the path by the berry vines, motioning to the Professor and Escargot to follow. They tiptoed down the path, Jonathan half expecting some ghost or troll or bear to leap out of the dense undergrowth. They didn’t go far, however, when there in the distant clearing they could see what was clearly the candlelit window of a small cabin. The sloped roof of the cabin was a dark shadow among the trees, and it appeared as if the smoke from a fire within was rising through the trees above. The weeping, louder there at the edge of the wood, sounded, if anything, more anguished.

  Escargot tugged on the sleeve of Jonathan’s jacket, and the three of them retraced their steps to the raft, finding that Dooly had locked them out. It took a bit of convincing to get him to open the door.

  ‘Do you think it’s goblins?’ the Professor asked.

  ‘Might be,’ said Escargot. ‘It’s impossible to say what sorts of pranks they’ll get up to.’<
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  ‘Doesn’t sound like goblins,’ Jonathan put in. ‘It may be that people are still living in Stooton. That sounded like a woman crying.’

  ‘It could be,’ said Escargot. ‘But if it is, we should let her cry. She doesn’t want us dropping in for a chat. Let’s leave it alone and get out of here.’

  ‘But if Jonathan is right,’ said the Professor, ‘then there’s been trouble up there. Might still be. We can’t just sail away.’

  Dooly, round-eyed by this time, had Ahab on his lap. He looked as if he could sail away quite happily.

  ‘I believe I’ll take Ahab,’ said Jonathan, ‘and have a look in that window.’ He began to regret his decision almost immediately, for the weeping started up again and reminded him of the darkness outside. But he had his code, after all.

  ‘You won’t go alone, Jonathan,’ said the Professor. ‘Dooly and Mr Escargot can stay on board and you and I will have a look at that clearing. If someone is up to shenanigans, we shouldn’t leave the raft unguarded.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Escargot. ‘But make it quick. Whistle three times so we know it’s you. If this is some kind of set up, then make a racket. We’ll beat a bunch of pans together if anything gets fishy.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Jonathan. ‘It won’t take a minute to hike up to that clearing.’ He and Professor Wurzle stepped back out into the night, each carrying an oak truncheon. They jumped across to the bank and squashed along up the path which was spongy with rainwater. It struck Jonathan as odd and a bit eerie that there wasn’t a frog or a cricket to be heard, only the deathlike silence broken now and again by weeping.

  Jonathan immediately wished they’d brought a lantern along and had a wild urge to dash back to the raft and get one. But the path wasn’t hard to pick out, and the lighted window of the cabin was clear ahead of them, so he resisted the urge and pushed on, the Professor close on his heels.

  The path wound around through the trees which were thick overhead, blotting out the sky almost entirely. Jonathan looked above him before plunging deeper into the woods and saw dark clouds boiling across the sky and what appeared to be a great bat winging along toward the river.

  The path, which Jonathan suspected should have led straightaway toward the cabin, angled sharply on the right. He and the Professor stopped, suspecting trickery, but saw a glow of light – the window which they’d lost sight of, evidently – off in the same general direction. The sound of weeping was louder than it had been. The glow through the trees, however, seemed to recede as they made their way along the path. Finally it blinked out altogether.

  ‘There’s something wrong here,’ said the Professor. ‘Let’s go back. Look sharp.’

  Jonathan had to agree. The light was all of a sudden gone, the weeping stopped, and they were quite simply alone in the deep woods. He hefted his club and was reassured a bit by it, but he would have been reassured even more had they a score or so of dwarf axe warriors along.

  They hadn’t gone more than twenty feet along the way they’d come when, very strangely, the path forked. There was no way of knowing which of the forks to take, and neither Jonathan nor the Professor had noticed the fork five minutes earlier. In fact, neither of the paths seemed to be the one they remembered. They seemed merely gloomy tunnels leading deeper into the forest. After a moment’s pause they took that path which led most clearly in the direction of the creek.

  But that path came to an abrupt end a hundred feet along. There was nothing to do but retrace their steps once again. And that’s just what they started to do when, away to the right, they saw the cabin window flickering with candlelight. The weeping began almost at once, louder than ever – weeping punctuated by a very tired and mournful moaning, again as if someone were grieving.

  They paused to listen for a moment, but in the silent spaces between the fits of weeping not even a leaf stirred. For a mad moment Jonathan considered rushing off helter-skelter through the woods, making the racket that Escargot had advised. But considering it stopped him. Professor Wurzle had a very determined look on his face, a sort of lesson-teaching look. So Jonathan hefted his club and, crouching a bit, crept through the trees toward the cabin.

  They were very near, about ten feet from the window, when the weeping began again. They heard a screech, like the howl of a banshee, and the rush and whir of bat wings overhead. Jonathan felt something brush across the top of his cap, and he swung his club at it but hit nothing. The night grew immediately silent once again. He and the Professor smashed themselves against the wall and inched once again toward the window as the weeping and moaning began anew. With one hand on their clubs and one on the windowsill, both of them rose until they could peer inside.

  It was a single large firelit room, almost empty of furniture and so dusty and hung with cobwebs that no one could have lived there for a long long time. Before the fire, sitting in a wooden rocker, head bent forward, was what appeared to be a hooded, black-robed woman who shook her head and wept into her hands. The embers of a fire glowed in front of her and cast a shadow onto the wall behind.

  The figure paused its rocking, and in the flickering red light of the fire turned toward the window. The hood fell away and the robe fell open and there in the midst of the cabin a grinning skeleton stared out at them through empty eye sockets and wept through clacking teeth. It rose shakily in the chair, as if incredibly old, and beckoning with a bony finger, took two halting steps toward the window before bursting into wild cackling laughter.

  Jonathan, at the sound of the thing’s laughter, swung his club, more out of instinct than motive, and smashed the glass of the window. The light went out inside and the fire died. There was a scuffling of feet on the floor and a fearful moaning. Jonathan and the Professor took off like the wind for the raft.

  The path, somehow, was where it should have been in the first place. Jonathan could almost feel dry fingers latching onto his shoulder, and could hear horrible laughter behind them, punctuated by dread weeping and gasping. From ahead, clanging through the night time, came the sound of pots and pans being beaten together and mixed with shouts and the barking of Ahab. The raft had been untied and had swung out into the river, but it had caught fast in the creek mouth because of the anchor. When Jonathan and Professor Wurzle pounded down the path to the creek and past the berry vines, they saw it, ablaze with light, swinging around into the shore some twenty feet or so beyond where they had tied up. On board was a confusion of howling goblins, of Ahab bounding back and forth, and of Dooly, who dashed about, clanging together a frying pan and a big sauce pan and pausing here and there to whack a goblin on the head with one or the other. Amid the entire swarm, an occasional goblin was suddenly spirited into the air, shaken, and thrown far out into the river. A little line of goblin heads bobbed away downstream.

  Jonathan scrambled along the steep edge of the bank, managing more than once to squash one or the other foot down into the muddy creek. What with the tangled roots of the shoreside trees, though, it was a simple if wet task to reach the raft. The light glowing so brightly on board turned out, to Jonathan’s dismay, to be a fire on the deck. The lantern had been knocked from its hook, and a circle of oil flamed away around the broken remains of the glass shade.

  Goblins cackled and hooted past him – a couple of dozen – more than he would have supposed could fit aboard. He took a moment right off to push a couple into the river. One paddled away after his bobbing companions, but the other, a great ugly thing who shrieked and babbled and rolled his eyes in a frenzy of strange goblin emotion, attempted to clamber back aboard. Jonathan unknowing, whipped away at the fire on deck with his jacket and was joined in a trice by Professor Wurzle, who did the same. The second of the two goblins that Jonathan had sent into the river managed, finally, to boost himself up onto the deck far enough to grasp Jonathan’s ankle in a taloned hand. The claws bit into the flesh of his leg, and he was jerked off balance, dropping his jacket into the fire and smashing backward into the cabin wall.

  Professor Wurz
le latched onto the sleeve of the jacket as Jonathan and the hooting goblin tumbled about, but when he pulled it out of the fire he saw that the whole thing was aflame. The Professor shouted in surprise and spun round to fling the flaming jacket into the river, only to see the wet and shrieking goblin flailing toward him. So the Professor, faced with such a scourge, flung the burning jacket onto the goblin’s head, an action that didn’t slow the thing down in the slightest. It continued to rage about waving both arms in a windmill of fury until Dooly pranced up behind it and slammed it in the back of the head with the cast iron frying pan, sending the thing headlong into the river along with the flaming remains of Jonathan’s coat.

  Jonathan dragged himself to his feet, rubbing the knot on the back of his head and marveling at the fact that his back and legs had been pretzeled so thoroughly in the tumble and yet still worked reasonably well. Around him things had quieted down somewhat. Ahab seemed to be playing tag with two or three goblins, one of whom had grabbed hold of the mast and was swinging around it, arm extended, like a twirlabout, laughing and shouting. One of the other goblins who seemed to have two heads in the weird flickering of the fire, dashed along up the deck and continued on to dash off the edge, legs running in air, sinking away in the end beneath the river. Another met head foremost with a mysterious floating truncheon and, staggered, was propelled from behind by an invisible boot into the Oriel. The Professor and Jonathan managed to smother the fire which, in fact, had consumed most of the puddle of oil and had pretty much burned itself out.