Ch: 97 …And His Hair Was Perfect
“Who were that whae let ye in the house, boy? Master Brejingles, tis an odd name…” Shai coaxed gently in the bath entrance.
“Oh… He’s Sammy, that’s one of his favorite songs, it’s called ‘Mr. Bojangles’. So sweetly sad, it says a lot about where I come from and why I don’t drink much of the booze I make.” He hopped down on the curb of the private bath. “I’ll play, but he should sing. He’s been waiting so long.”
He began to strum a simple rhythm and whistle a sad sharp melody. That slender, tiny form slipped from between the bamboo shade and the garden wall.
Sammy twirled his shadow fingers into a shadow bowler hat. With a graceful and gentle flip, the hat rolled up his arm and leapt onto his shadowy head. He took a half bow, with a slow, gliding step back, spun on his rear toe and began to slide in a slow, shuffling dance around the bath.
I knew a man, Bojangles and he danced for you
In worn out shoes
Silver hair, a ragged shirt and baggy pants
The old soft shoe
He jumped so high
He jumped so high
Then he'd lightly touched down
The voice was higher than Gary’s but richer, more refined. He let his melancholy lyrics unfold slowly in the steam and shade. The song spilled across the bath, spreading like thick sweet molasses. It drifted, dreamy and beautiful, to its sad sweet, lack of a conclusion…
Mr. Bojangles
Mr. Bojangles
Mr. Bojangles
Dance…
Wilford and Amy were slowly stumbling around, trying to follow his dance, so complex and challenging, while seeming an effortless glide. Shai dabbed her eyes on a conjured flannel and sobbed just a little, while passing it to Gary, for his turn.
He smiled sadly, summoned a tiny jar and dismissed the cloth, letting their mingled tears dop into the tiny vial, running down the last dangling thread as it vanished.
“Waste not want not.” He said, once again.
“That song do say much about yer home, I dinnae care tae see such a place. E’en though thou didst come frae there…” Gary held her while she sobbed and wrestled her flaring accent back under control.
“When we go to bed, movie night. First, ‘The Adventures Of Robin Hood’, with Errol Flynn, then “Bugsy Malone’, Becky and Wilford are going to love that one.” He sighed happily, plotting their night’s homework.
“After that, ‘Robin And The Seven Hoods’... Sammy, Deano, Franky and so many more.”
#
“No Gary, no.” Thirp stood in the stairs blocking the way.
“It’s fine, it'll be fine, everythings fine…” Gary tried to scoot past the spider, but eight legs can block a lot of stairs.
“You cannot simply throw these things out there all… ‘willy silly?’ no, willy…” She stopped and planted all eight eyes on him. “You know what I mean, biped… the mandibles on you, leaving me twisting on a strand like that.”
“Even when I know where we’re going, I still enjoy the ride.” A small clot of fluffy, sticky web slapped him right in his stupid, grinning monkey face. “I don’t know if that was hilarious or a deadly insult…”
“Shai, please translate that for me.” The exhausted spider sang. Gary felt that familiar whack on the back of his coconut. Not painful, or even jarring, just a little percussive maintenance to the brain box.
“Ohhh… I get it now.” He mumbled. “The intimacy of the gesture derives from the assailant’s conviction that no repercussions will unfold…” He had a notepad out, his pen scribbled rapidly as he thought out loud in mid stair.
“...range is inverse to intimacy… carry the compatibility and resonance figures, multiplied by the root of Shai’s cute butt…” He snapped his book closed with a smile. “Math is usually boring… What were you panicking over?”
Thirp took a stimulating little run up a wall and over the ceiling, to let out some stress. She strung a web across the railing and wall to make her point, while she prepared herself for the fight of her life.
“Gary,” She sang very clearly and slowly, as she descended from the ceiling on a line and cleared her webs away. “...you get, as you say, ‘only one shot at this’. Do you really want to ‘cue it up and let her roll’ or ‘set it… and forget it!’ as you have been insisting?”
“Yeah, throw it against the wall and see what sticks… run it up the flagpole, maybe someone will salute… put another shrimp… no not that one.” He paused, lost in deep thoughts. “Do we have any abyssal shrimp left? Tempura…”
“Gary, you have children and a mate, a family and friends depending on you, we can’t have you running face first into everything, just to see how close you can get to…” She glanced at Amy and Wilford, impatiently waiting for the grownups to figure it out.
“...hurting yourself.” She finished. Shai rattled his bean again, to make the point clear.
His surrender here, would be just another, in what promised to be, a long string of similar results with the women in his life. He looked to the future; and an endless chain of stalemates, pyrrhic victories and frantic withdrawals led down that other road…
He spoke the only enchantment strong enough to avert that fate.
“Yes dear.”
“Aye, now ye shall listen to Thirp, who be a mother many times over and wise beyond all knowing.” Shai had him by the nose, but ‘If the bull would follow anyway, what matters the ring?’... As marduk liked to say on these occasions.
The kids ran off to play, chasing shadows in the garden and learning new old songs.
“So what’s wrong with my plan, Thirp?” He asked, gently.
“First, these things must be planned, curated, rigorously researched with all due consideration for cultural nuance, sensitivity and inclusivity. Not simply cocooned in the dark and served up without tasting…” She shuddered in revulsion, at some remembered event.
“That’s how you wind up serving your arch webmatron a trashmoth on feast night.”
“Weirdly specific… I know there’s a story there… I can’t believe it’s me saying this… let’s stay on task.”
Thirp and Shai both paused on that one, checking to make sure Gary hadn't pulled off a ‘substitution jutsu’ or whatever he had been working on since he got all shadowy. Shai gave a good firm poke into the clothes and hit boy…
“aye tis him…” She muttered.
They cornered him by the fireplace and he sank into the sofa, while the children played outside and they tore his plans to shreds.
“...You put the middle at the beginning and the end nowhere in sight.” Thirp wound up for the big finish, to really put him in his place.
“The answer, the only place to even begin is here, at the very beginning of all human things…” She scuttled to Shai, whispering urgently.
“Quickly, while I have him ensnared in logic. Get the children, we must begin now!”
#
Gary was beginning to struggle and protest feebly, but Shai, Becky and the two divinities had him held down. “Tis fer the best, dinnae struggle.”
“But they’re just kids, they can’t…” Gary began, as the kids sat down on either side of the pile Gary was trapped under.
“I made some cuts Gary. I understand your prudish culture, but Mel Brooks’ ‘History Of The World, Part One’ is the only place to start… Though I do have some theological questions, that’s for later. Shush, it’s starting!”
#
Morning came late under the escarpment Flintspire Town was named for. Gary was up… or rather, up and down in the lab, working on ‘things’, ‘stuff’ and ‘whatsits’. Herlick was supervising, by knitting some of that sweet angora into a fluffy, warm cap for Wilford.
Soft tooting noises drifted through his sound isolating witchcraft, as he worked on something odd. He kept muttering about ‘valves’ and ‘embrasures’, as he tapped, filed and soldered his workpiece. “Meh, it’s a start, I bet Tallum… Oh.. yeah.”
Gary tucked away his tangled mess of brass and bronze with a sigh. “I’m going upstairs, we are probably moving soon.”
Liam’s weird ability to burgle from Gary was limited to and by, only what was in the house and the house’s perimeter. That meant the local teamsters just backed their wagons in.
Liam would pop in under the tarps and poof… Meatwads and fishloads stacked up until axles groaned.
“Gary, If you tell Esperanza about this… I am not a stevedore!” He complained.
“Liam baby, we could start a moving company…
Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.
You be the brawn, and I’ll be the… no, you’re the brains… all I bring to this is my magic booty… but you have a magic booty too, we voted on it remember?”
“Gary…” Liam asked, exhausted and hoping for a nice quiet run. “...could we start the musical nonsense now?”
The party left the river behind just after Flintspire, branching off onto the Port Clement Road and up into the mountains. Climbing wide, well maintained roads in cool pleasant weather started off well enough. The sound of hooves on pavers was a beat that always felt like travellin’ music anyway.
They rode, at a steady canter, now that the guard troop was left behind in Flintspire Town. Mountain roads and wide sweeping vistas lay ahead of the friends and family that left town on a bright spring morning.
#
“Gary, I dinnae ken how ye did see all these things in real time, tis so much, so many!” She whispered at lunch, while the kids played with Sandi and Annie.
“I spent a lot of time flat, laid out, immobile, going nowhere and getting there slow. I watched a lot of tv, read way too much and spent far too long on the internet. There was no Tawny to put me back together, no Shai to feed me cake on my birth day.” He nestled in with her in the cart, smushing Nara into the corner.
“Impertinent monkeys!” She chittered and laughed, squashing her toebeans in their faces, as she walked over the pair.
“I did see the things Thirp did cut out frae the picture show, twas naught unusual.” She murmured. “We do bathe together, they hae or will soon see us ‘smoked stupid’ as ye say…” She sighed, pulling him closer. “Amy hae already stumbled in on us… tis only a matter of time ere Wilford does.”
“I can’t handle the responsibility…” He mumbled.
“In me home, we dinna hae rooms, twas a roundhouse, all taegether fer good an all. ‘Privacy’ were hardly thought on, an bairns plentiful.” She shrugged. “I see yer ways, but dinnae think that they be the only right ones.”
“We aren't doing that, Shai. Besides… I noticed Harlan’s house and yours have rooms… Harlan built his, you are yours.”
Even the clumsy monkey catches the branch, sometimes… Gary knocked her legs out from under her with that one.
She giggled and squeezed up to him, until he was buried in Shai. “Aye, not much do I remember, but twas a hard life, out the fringe. Yet ye are a terrible prude still.”
#
Becky was on Shams, borrowed from the cult of War for this job. He was a good boy and way into Sandi. She only had to suggest that he conform to the niceties of human society, to settle him down. Annie flicked her ears in approval of the tan pony’s skills.
Gary sat on the cart bench with a bass guitar, strumming and thumbing to the beat of the hooves. He locked down a simple loping canter, then winked at Shai. She shrugged and tried to follow along. He coaxed her into a high swaying melody, while Liam came in on the guitar doing some fine improvisational sololing. Dannyl had the rhythm guitar part down, spanking, scratching and muting his way into the party.
“I like this one!” Liam shouted. “Let me start!” Liam handed the solo off to Dannyl, as he attacked the crunchy, repetitive, rhythm part. That gave him the attention to pay the weird lyrics.
I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand,
Walking through the streets of SoHo, in the rain.
He was looking for the place called Lee Ho Fooks,
For to get a big dish of beef chow mein.
Ah-hoo, werewolves of London
Ah-hoo
Ah-hoo, werewolves of London
Ah-hoo
At a glare from Gary, Liam took a turn around the later verses, since Amy and Wilford were howling along. He smiled when Liam skipped the mutilating parts.
“This song makes no sense at all…” Khan shouted to Liam, during Dannyl’s extended solo.
“I know! I never heard it before!” Liam shouted back. “That has me pretty worried! Still fun though!”
#
They climbed higher into the mountains, clattering along on well paved and cleared roads. Most small villages had an inn or waystation by the road, with the village set back, behind low, but thick walls of rammed earth, studded liberally with sharp flinders of the local flint.
Picking a safe path up those sloping ramparts would be punishing. Even if they were only four feet high.
“A lot of monsters or bandits up here?” Gary asked.
“Wildlife, mostly just frightening, unless a giant moose eats your whole vegetable patch. A warren of colossal rabbits can make a village profitable or starve them out. Giant wolves, boars and bears are troublesome at times, but rare.” Khan lectured as they rode, to Amy and Wilford’s jazz explorations of hot cross buns.
“The Adventure guild takes patrol contracts through these mountain villages, when War is bogged down or things get busy. Most Adventure bands make a living on those, as much as requests and ‘monster busting’ as you say.”
Khan was downright chatty and glowing with happiness. Even his ‘stache looked better than usual and it usually looked so good, it was jarring. They rode along in companionable silence for a few minutes.
“I really feel bad we missed your wedding… I guess the rings were a hit with luna?” Gary asked, while pretending to use the reins.
“She loves them… Boy if those reins went anywhere, your cart would be in a ditch. With a very angry and injured pony. Let me show you something of this…”
You have gained skill in animal handling, Congratulations.
You have gained skill in horsemanship, Congratulations.
You have gained skill in wagon driving, Congratulations.
“Huh, I should see what else I picked up while things have been nuts…” He murmured to himself. Khan was accustomed to that kind of thing with the boy and simply ignored it. His explanations were worse than unanswered questions.
“Storage rings are too grand a gift for simple Adventurers, but Shai says you are inflexible on this… I never thought I’d give my wife a silver ring… and enchanted too.” He swatted the madman on the shoulder.
“Truth is, where I’m from, silver is way less valuable to most folks than gold, by a lot… when I made these…” He grinned and shook his head.
“As far as I’m concerned, the enchantment is the gift, the ring just holds it and silver is the best for the job by a mile. I can gold plate them if that makes you more comfortable. Or I can bronze plate if you wanna go super stealth…”
“I take that ring off her finger when I bury her, or she buries me and takes mine. Otherwise…” The joyful warrior said, with a radiant smile. “We made the decision to take our bond with Otho in private. Long ago, we made an oath to not delay and we thought that you would… well…”
“Married life looks good on you, give Luna this tonight, it’s an experiment, apple brandy with sugar wasp honey. A friend of mine gave me a big jar of the stuff… something about a bounty on my attackers.”
He passed over a small basket covered with a cloth. “You guys taste that and let me know how it works out.”
#
The road wound up the mountain to a wide pass, they rattled by the sleepy market village at the top and down into another valley. Wide and shallow, they rumbled down what amounted to foothills, into a high arid plain.
Scrub and cacti dominated high up, with infrequent streams and more verdant folds in the countryside spread out below them. In the hazy distance, a river broke into a broad, marshy delta, lost in the evening haze.
“Tell me about Port Clement…” Gary asked after a bit. “In the bath tonight, I like the look of this place…”
“It has much to recommend it. First, I am going to ride ahead and find a spot to… ‘camp’.” Khan gave a short toot on his warhorn, calling back his outrider, Dannyl in this case, mounted on a golden palomino named Tater.
Her name hardly fit the fine prancing animal, they slowed to let the deceptively fast moving party overtake them, while Khan and Annie took the front.
Khan called the halt a couple miles later, on a level and rocky clearing just off the road. Sheltered from the wind blowing up the valley by a flinty overhang, it commanded a decent view of the valley.
Color shifted and swirled in the distance as the sun went down behind them, painting the valley in a wash of pink and violet, shading to gray, then darkness. The mountains brought sunset early, so they prepared for a long, leisurely evening.
A low, gray sheet of clouds came riding up the valley as they prepared themselves for a cold windy night on the hillside. They arranged the front of the house and garden gate to lie just off the road, with the garden and baths under the overhanging cliff face.
The garden was draped in shadow, but protected from the wind, rain and slow curling, writhing tendrils of fog. Mostly, the mist crept in, drifting over the walls and pouring over into the garden, in a misty waterfall of clammy, sea scented damp.
Hanging moss and creepers festooned the overhanging rocks, while fungi and shade loving ferns, mosses and herbs covered the dim recesses. Gary’s garden lights threw dim illumination beyond his walls, but shadow and mist engulfed the rearmost section of the almost cavern.
“I really like this place… it feels like…” He strolled out his back gate and to the edge of the dim illumination. “Hey, Rocky, you in there?”
A low, tired voice came drifting back from the depths. “I can’t hear the words of the dead… if only that dancing mortal were here…”
The rest of the troop heard only a low, stoney rumble. Not an encouraging sound when a cliff face loomed overhead, blocking out the stars.
Khan, Luna and the rest had grown accustomed to the weirdos having one sided conversations with animals, plants and things... So they bustled about their business, while Shai mocked and abused her man… and flirted with a mountain grotto.
“Twill be grand tae have an adult conversation, me friend. Solange the Magnolia did leave our company yesterday, the banter has been duller than wooden knives since.”
She sang, while the boy played a slow waltz on his mandolin for her. Amy and Wilford bumbled through the gate with Becky at their heels, giggling madly, moments after the music began.
The children skipped and pranced up to the edge of the light and began playing in the moss and stones. “Ok, Wilford, you roll up some moss. Amy, find me some pebbles and twigs.”
Becky handed Wilford a small bronze trowel and set the kids to work, while she got her harp in the action.
“Shai, the kids heard your new friend talking and they wanna meet them. I don’t think we get a vote in this.”
Becky sang, while Gary shook his head and smiled serenely, sitting on a mossy green boulder and playing for his family in the dark.
A cluster of heads and shoulders appeared in silhouette over the garden wall as the little mad family worked and played. The Adventurers watched in silence as the kids played with the local rubbish, building a rolly polly humanoid figure.
He had a military bearing, with a shelf fungus tricorn hat over his coat of mossy green and polypore mushroom epaulets. Shiny pebble eyes, flint shard teeth and a clay mask for a face made a strange little imaginary playmate…
“So many mortals under my stones… Your pet still makes me itchy, Ironmonger Shai… but these others are fine indeed.” The little general stood and marched over to the musician, eyeing him up and down for a moment.
“Better, much better, you are more human, in your way now… or at least a better imitation of one.”
“Thanks Rocky. I think you saw Becky, the high priestess, a little while ago. These are my kids, Amy and Wilford.”
“Thank you children, you make a very fine mannikin body.” He gave them a stiff little salute that made Amy giggle. Wilford did his best to imitate the creature’s gesture and smeared mud in his hair.
Gary turned to the gathered watchers, hiding behind his walls and waved. “Come out and join, or go back inside… go on, scat!” Slowly the lights began to dim, plunging the little family into darkness with their new friend.
“Last time we spoke, you hinted that you like crystals… Shai says you have monsters too. Could I interest you in a monster inside a crystal? He’s a real asshole, I’d like to see him kept busy for a long, long time.”
#
In the bath, with the cavern silt washed out of Wilford’s hair, Gary chatted idly with Bannock and Herlick.
“It doesn’t have or want a name, it just sorta is… It’s very zen, super chill. It does like to watch Shai dance and I annoy it, so they have that in common with… everybody.”
“But the worm thing… to leave such a horror in the care of a nameless…” Bannock began, while idly combing Wilford’s hair into a glorious pompadour.
“Best remember our manners… Rocky is all around us. The worm is just a worm now. It was foolish enough to bargain with whatever entity is screwing around with us and got enslaved.”
Gary helped Amy out of the pool, so she could dash around it and splash back in, yipping with joy and enjoying the echoes that returned from the overhang.
“I expected to drag part of that worm into our world, slap it around and maybe imprison its intellect in my stone… the whole thing just slipped right in, along with its curse…” Gary made a very forceful ‘watch what you say around my kids’ face, at the puzzled knight.
“In breaking its curse, it became a part of this world. Now it is a mortal parasitic worm, it can no longer reproduce or divide itself. The laws of this place are very strict.” Gary grinned as Wilford took a running jump into the pool.
“In this place, to be incarnate is to be mortal. Only naturally born creatures can reproduce. Outsiders can wield only the magic of this world.” He ticked them off one by one with bittersweet satisfaction.
“That’s why that worm is no longer a problem and I am still genocide and extinction free… my hands are technically clean.” His smug smile was too much.
“And if this thing does escape? What then?” Bannock demanded, while Herlick braided Amy’s hair.
“Even if it escapes without getting salted down, no worries. Because the now long extinct creature it evolved to parasitize the bowels of, never even existed in this world… he’s out in the cold with no poop chute to hide in.”
The young priestess weighed in on the matter, while Bannock redid her braids with deft, slender fingers. “Rocky is a collector of oddities, it has a menagerie of… things it’s collected over the eons, down in the depths… The Skrigg will not make a lasting impression down there.” Becky shuddered in the hot water and swam under the steaming falls to shake off the ookies.
“The important thing to remember, when dealing with entities like Rocky, they are inflexible. Once he took that rock and tucked it away with no intent to ever take it out…” Gary dusted his hands together with a happy smile.
“Boom, set your alarm clock for geologic time. Skrigg is out of the game.”
“I’m satisfied. Bannock? How about you?” Herlick asked, from where she was braiding Shai’s hair.
“I will accept that…better to slay such a thing outright… very well.” They took a long float, staring up at the mossy stone through the fog. “This place is restful.”
#
“Locals, what few there are in these hills… They call this the haunted grotto.” Khan said ominously. The little ones were in bed, the herb had been significantly cut with mint for a refreshing, but not crippling evening smoke.
“They say, those who dare to camp beneath this massif risk visions and dreams of the otherworld…”
“Khan, the boy is already completely haunted… you cannot ghost story us anymore. Tell them of Port Clement.” Luna murmured as she settled in beside him under a blanket.
“Yes dear.” He replied, wisely. “Clement is much like Wheatford, they grow grapes and figs on the lower slopes, rye, barley and oats on the uplands. Down in the wetlands things get very interesting. Rice, very fine vegetables and herbs… the fishing is…” Khan drifted off, looking dreamy.
“The curse of men,” Luna remarked to the girls. “A bold horseman, who wants to visit the wetland marshes.” She handed him the pipe with a nudge. “Where will Annie be, while you are off on your fishing adventure, fool?”
Gary Looked up from the depths of the shadows pressing all around, his face pale and drawn with a voice that seemed to drift up from an open, yawning grave, he whispered;
“I could make a custom set of waders…”