Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Elven Princess (7 page)

“How long has what been?”

“How long has it been since your family
disappeared?”

“Oh. That. I really can’t say.”
“You know, I’ve been thinking.” Jholeira stood up and began to pace
back and forth beside the campfire. “The purple drops on the floor,
as I’ve already said, could be from the blueberry pie you were
expecting.”

“Fiends!” said I.

“As far as Gervil’s knife being stuck in his
bed is concerned, that could be an indicator of foul play or of
nothing at all.”

“I see.”

“The floorboards being pried up however
tells us something. Whoever the culprit or culprits were, they were
looking for something hidden under the floor. Money maybe? Family
jewels?”

“The unpublished manuscripts of the world
famous Eaglethorpe Buxton,” I offered.

“I suppose that is conceivable,” said she.
“What I don’t understand is the onions in the rafters. The only
thing I can think of is that they were trying to ward off
vampires.”

“Monsters!” said I. “But wait. Isn’t that
supposed to be garlic?”

“Maybe they couldn’t find any. Or maybe they
didn’t know the difference. Garlic looks a lot like an onion.”

“Oh, my family would know the difference,”
said I. “My poor old father was a fine onion farmer. In fact one
variety, the Winter Margram onion was named for him. My cousin
Gervil wrote an epic poem about onions, though I was never able to
memorize more than the first five hundred twelve lines.”

“Is that all?” she wondered.

“Tuki was Onion Queen three years
running.”

“So it is possible that your family would
have had onions around? Say, hanging from the rafters?”

“Only at harvest time.”

“Was it harvest time?”
“Was what harvest time?”
“Was it harvest time when your family disappeared?”

“It could have been.”

“So there really are no clues at all,”
postulated the half-orphan.

“What about the tracks?” I asked. “What
about the tracks that ended mysteriously after only fifty
feet?”

“You said it was a stormy night. The rain
probably washed the tracks away.”

“You’re right,” said I. “The next time it
will be morning.”

“What do you mean next time?”

“Um, nothing.”

“You mean the next time your family gets
kidnapped or the next time you tell this?”

“Well…”

“Your family never was stolen at all!” She
stood up with back straight and finger pointed accusingly. She
looked quite intimidating. “You lied!”

“It’s wasn’t a lie,” I explained. “It was a
story. Well, it was a first draft.”

Jholeira curled up in my blanket next to the
fire and went to sleep without another word. I didn’t think this
strange, but when she did not deign to speak to me the following
morning I began to feel a little put off. I decided that if she
wasn’t going to speak to me, then I wouldn’t speak to her either.
We packed up and left our campsite in complete silence. By
elevenses I was getting rather tired of the quiet. Over a brief
meal of raisins and cheese I tried first to coax her and then to
trick her into speaking. She would have none of it however and I
eventually stopped trying.

The little path that we followed wound down
through a series of small valleys, eventually coming to the stream.
The trees grew thick on both sides of the stream and indeed on the
far side there was a vast expanse of forest that is Elven Wood. The
stream itself was no more than twenty feet wide and its broadest
expanse and in those places where it widened out thus, it was only
a few inches deep. Though the banks were icy, the water was clear
and free-flowing. Upon reaching it in late afternoon, we followed
it southeast until, finding a narrow spot where the water deepened
to several feet, I stopped to drink and look for fish.

The greatest skill I ever learned, with the
single possible exception of story-telling which is more of an art
form than a skill, is that of guddling fish. Fish which have swum
up the shallow part of a stream, will often take shelter under a
rock or a ledge when they come to a deeper and slower moving part
of a river. When they do, they become prey for the guddler. He
reaches his hand under the ledge, knowing where a fish ought to be,
and carefully locates the fish’s tail. Then he begins tickling the
fish with his finger, tickling its tail, then tickling its belly,
and finally tickling right under the gills. Then with a quick
grasp, he pulls the fish from the water and tosses it up onto the
shore, ready to be cleaned, cooked, and eaten. If the temperature
of the water made the fish sluggish, you couldn’t tell it by the
ones I found, though it didn’t do me any good sticking my arm in. I
caught two lovely river trout that day, one which I cleaned and
cooked over the fire for our supper, and the other which I kept
captive by running a string through its gill, and tying one end to
a sapling, and tossing the other end, attached to the fish, back in
the water. This second fish we ate for breakfast.

It was late the following afternoon before
we reached the intersection of the stream with the East Road. By
this time I had resolved myself to the fact that my little orphan
boy/girl was never going to speak to me again, but as we crossed
the small bridge which spanned the juxtaposition of the road and
the stream, as bridges are wont to do, she at last broke her
silence.

“We should spend the night on this side of
the stream.”

“Why?”

“The forest is dangerous, especially at
night.”

“I don’t care,” said I. “I’m not talking to
you.”
“Yes you are,” she replied.

“No. I am not.”

“I was not talking to you, but now I am. But
you are definitively talking to me.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Yes you are.”

“I’m not talking to you. I’m just telling
you that I’m not talking to you.”

“That means that you are talking to me,
because in order to tell a person something you have to talk to
them.”

“No you don’t.”

“Now you are just being contrary,” said
she.

“No I’m not.”

“Fine,” said she. “I don’t care whether you
are talking to me or not…”

“Yes you do.”

“I don’t care whether you are talking to me
or not and I don’t care whether you are being contrary or not. In
either case we should spend the night on this side of the
stream.”

“No we shouldn’t,” said I.

“No?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” I explained.

“Well as long as your reasoning is sound,”
said she.

“No it isn’t.”

We spent the night on the west side of the
bridge, just at the edge of the trees on that side of the stream.
By the time we made camp, it was too late for me to find any fish
to guddle, so we ate dried beef and drank coffee for our supper.
Jholeira curled up in the only blanket while I snuggled up in my
coat and set my head upon a large flat rock to use as a pillow.

“Are you cold?” she asked.

“No.”

“I’m sorry I stopped talking to you. You
have been a very great help to me and you didn’t have to and here I
am wrapped up in your only blanket while you have nothing but your
coat to keep you warm.”

“I have the fire. Besides, it is only
fitting that you have the blanket, being an orphan or a girl or a
princess or some combination of the three.”

I stayed awake quite late watching the stars
and listening to Hysteria complain about her lack of oats. She
should have happy, as in that particular spot by the bridge there
grew not only an abundance of grass but some early flowering
szigimon, which any stable master can tell you is the very best
horse feed in the world. Many times she has had to make due with
busy grass, which is the least best horse feed in the world—not
that it is bad for horses, but it does nothing more than give them
something to chew on and doesn’t provide any real nourishment. You
would think by now she would know when she had it good.

“What are you doing?” asked a small voice
from the other side of the campfire.

“I’m pondering horse feed,” said I.

“Well, go to sleep.” It must have been some
kind of elf magic, because no sooner had she said this than my eyes
closed, seemingly of their own volition.

I must admit that I slept well, not
withstanding the fact that I was using a rock for my pillow, and I
had no mattress but the bare ground, and I hadn’t even my own
blanket to keep warm. I slept well. I slept well until just before
dawn, when suddenly, which is to say all of a sudden and without
warning, I felt the weight of several bodies fall upon me. I
struggled and threw one or two punches which found their targets,
but having been attacked in my sleep and no doubt lulled into a
state of drowsiness by elven magic, it was inevitable that I was
overpowered. They took me captive, which is to say they tied my
hands behind my back, gagged me, and put a sack over my head. Then
they hobbled my legs with a piece of rope so that I could take only
the most mincing of steps.

I heard some shouting and I thought I
recognized Jholiera’s voice, but with the bag over my head it was
impossible to make out what was being said. Once I thought I heard
her demand my release, but I wasn’t released. I wasn’t sure who had
attacked me, but I was relatively sure that it wasn’t goblins. Oh
to be sure, goblins are thick in those parts. But had goblins come
upon a sleeping man, they would have sliced his throat rather than
taken him captive.

The point of something sharp jabbed me in
the back. I didn’t know if it was a dagger or a sword or a pike or
a javelin or a sharp stick, but the meaning behind it seemed clear
enough to me. I was to go in the direction opposite from the side
in which I was being jabbed, which is to say the back of me, so I
should go forward. I did, but I didn’t go very fast, being hobbled
as I was. Despite the fact that it had been my captors who had
hobbled me they didn’t seem to want to take that into
consideration, for they kept jabbing me to hurry me up.

It is hard to judge time when your senses
are deprived, which is to say your head is in a sack. But as I was
marched along, enough light came in through the weave of the cloth
that I could tell when dawn arrived and could more or less make out
in which direction the sun was to be found as it move up and across
the sky. We didn’t stop to break our fast, and we didn’t stop for
elevenses, and we didn’t stop for lunch. When we didn’t stop for
tea, I tried to protest by planting my feet on the ground and
refusing to go on. The only effect that my protest had was an even
fiercer jab with a dagger or a sword or a pike or a javelin or a
sharp stick right below my left shoulder blade—fierce enough to
draw blood. This, as you can imagine, didn’t make the walk any more
fun at all.

Fortunately it was only a few more hours
after that fierce jab when we arrived at our destination. I was
jerked and pulled around until they had me right where they wanted
me. Then my hood was pulled off, revealing to me three of my
abductors. They were warriors, wearing shining armor. Their long
golden hair and long pointed ears, as well as their stature, gave
evidence to their obvious relation to my little half-orphan friend,
who was at that moment nowhere to be found. The warriors removed my
gag and hobble but kept my hands tied. Then they left me.

I looked around to find that I was in a
small cave that had been turned into a prison with metal bars
across its entrance. From the mouth of the cave I could see nothing
but trees and forest. Inside the cave there was nothing but a ratty
old blanket on the rough stone ground. You may think that it would
be impossible to sleep under the circumstances, and ordinarily I
might agree with you. But as I had been awakened in the middle of
the night and cruelly marched almost an entire day, I was very
tired and very sore and the wound in my back was beginning to
sting. I suspected that without being cleaned it might gather an
infection, especially in such a place as I now found myself in,
full of noxious cave vapors.

When I woke, there was a small bowl of mush
sitting just inside the bars. It was mildly humiliating to have to
eat like a dog, since my hands were still tied behind my back, but
I did it. I have learned on the few occasions that I have found
myself behind bars that one should keep up one’s strength if
possible. So if you are behind bars and you are given food, you
should eat it. In the jails of Theen, I was lucky when I got a
maggot-filled potato. In the prisons in Aerithraine I have eaten
curds and stale bread. Food in Lyrian prisons are a mixed bag,
depending upon which city-state you find yourself. And woe be to
him who is imprisoned in Thulla-Zor. I was once thrown in a
tomb-like cell there and had to hunt for my own food—and you don’t
want to know what it was. Imagine my surprise when I ate this bowl
of mush then to find a delicious mix of unborn grains and dried
fruits. So I ate, I sat down against the wall, and I waited to see
what would come.

It was well into the morning before I was
given a clue as to what was going on. Three new elven men arrived
outside the bars of my cell. I mean that they were new because I
hadn’t seen them before, not that they were new because they were
newly born. In fact, they were fully grown though their age was
indeterminate, all looking quite youthful. One had long grey hair
while the other two sported long blond locks. It was the
grey-haired elf who spoke to me.

“You are to be tried for the kidnapping of a
princess of the elven people,” he said.

“This is a big mistake,” said I. “I had
nothing to do with any kidnapping. Quite the contrary. I was
helping her return to her home.”