The Wondermark Gazette

Our story thus far: Mistaken (at my own unspoken urging) for the ancient healer Grenadon, I was rescued from a crazed mob of sickly cripples by a mysterious raven-haired woman — who seems to know a dark secret about my identity.

She knew. This dark woman — Rikah, I later learned, a name that unfortunately meant “reeking” — knew who I was.

“Even from the moment you arrived on the island, I could tell something was off,” Rikah continued, not looking back at me, but continuing to direct the horse surely along the narrow, cliff-side path. “We have prepared since birth for Grandfather Grenadon’s eventual return. The shape of the bright-jade” — my stolen necklace, still shining its sharp green light onto the path ahead of us — “has been imprinted into our memories from the earliest days of kindergarten. We ran flash-card quizzes until our eyes bled. We see it everywhere we look, like it or not.” She shook her head, as if trying to clear her mind; the motion sent her hair spinning fluffily, like a terrier dropped into a well. “We were told that Grandfather Grenadon would return when the time was right, that age and the passage of years would not affect him. We were told that he might return that very day, or at the end of our lifetimes, or not at all while we still lived. So you can understand the Mayor’s jubilant reaction, and that of the town. This morning was the culmination of their lives.”

From my awkward perch in the saddle behind her, I stared at the back of my hand, green from the jade — the wrinkles brought on by time spent in the salt-barrel were beginning to fade, and my skin was resuming its natural lustre. Oh, what a time for my superiour genes to manifest their awesome greatness! What a price I would pay for my body’s healthful glow! Why couldn’t I look older? At this rate I would probably get carded at liquor-stores, if I ever made it out of here, and I’d have to settle for mop-barrel Scotch again.

“Whenever we asked when Grenadon would return, we were always told the same thing, by parents or teachers or back-alley lovers,” she sighed. “Those of us who cared to question were only ever given one answer. ‘When he is assured of defeating our enemy.’ By this they meant old man Peapoddy.”

I sucked in my breath at the mention of the name. I knew she meant Peapoddy the Elder, who had apparently been a thorn in the side of the real Abner Grenadon — but I had my own beef with Peapoddy the Younger, the old man’s son, who had nearly killed the love of my life, thus sending me on the quest that had so far led me to this lonely isle where there were no liquor-stores that I had found.

“Old man Peapoddy was the bogeyman of our childhoods,” she mused into the night. “Our parents told us to go to sleep at night or old man Peapoddy would come from the closets and bite off our toes. Whenever we broke a tea-pot, we blamed it on old man Peapoddy, who’d rushed in the kitchen door and dashed the vessel from our tiny hands, laughing all the way — he loved the sound of breaking porcelain mingled with children’s tears, if my stories were to be believed. Even in school, when we were caught canoodling in the locker-rooms, the snide refrain was always ‘In here with Peapoddy, then?’ So of course, we as a society were eager for Peapoddy to be defeated, once and for all.”

I wasn’t entirely sure where this was going, but as long as it hadn’t yet lead up to Thus, you are not Grenadon, I was content to keep my mouth shut and listen. Besides, the back of Rikah’s head was awful pretty, and as long as she faced forwards, I could stare all I liked.

“But the problem was, Peapoddy the man was never an actual threat to us. The spectre of his presence was all there was to the mythology. I never saw the old man in the flesh — I doubt my parents ever did either. And as soon as I became old enough to think, at my quinceañera, I began to doubt if there had ever even been a Peapoddy.”

“Oh, Peapoddy’s real,” I muttered, but she didn’t seem to hear me, or else was too enrapt with the sound of her voice to pause. I began to wonder if she could feel the pressure of my stare at the back of her head. With a shiver, I began to wonder if perhaps everybody could feel the pressure of lewd stares, and I was but a mutant who couldn’t! The prospect suddenly seemed frighteningly possible — all these years, my servants and lovers and various victims had just been polite by not mentioning my handicap! Oh, the shame!

“So when we began to hear rumours from traders that old man Peapoddy had died — in the Dark Continent, as one early story went, or in an opium-den in Ceylon, covered in hogs-fat and in the company of the official body-double for the President of the American Confederacy, as most of the later ones agree — we had no reason to doubt the accounts. For when had we ever seen the man alive? Yet still our parents insisted that Peapoddy lived — if only because the almighty Grenadon had still not returned to us, and our fortunes were still in tatters. Here we are.”

She didn’t mention my staring. I was probably home free. She swung down from the horse and found her feet lightly on a thin outcropping of cliff-path, no wider than a child’s torso, and about as firm to the foot. I followed her gingerly, the bright-jade piercing my eyes with its cringing rays. I could scarcely see one dog’s-length ahead of me, so I concentrated on following the shimmer of Rikah’s flowing black hair, as she led the horse along the treacherous path on foot.

We rounded a corner of the cliff, and before us, a massive darkness blocked out the stars. Either a dense cloud, or a bizarrely uniform rock-formation, or a supremely massive Shamrock-Shake-fuelled-hallucination filled the eye-scape. I strained my eyes to discern its form, but at this distance, I could make out no more than a vague silhouette. To better see, I covered the bright-jade with both hands, and though green rays still crept through my fingers, a dark shadow descended over most of our path. What a relief from that incessant glare!

The horse stopped. “Come along,” Rikah cooed, and the horse took a single, tentative step into the darkness ahead —

The animal was beside us one second, then off the edge the next, and all we heard was a thick splash far below.

One horse was a small price to pay for clarity of vision, I thought, but Rikah seemed a bit peeved. “That was my beloved horse that I’d raised since birth,” she said flatly.

“He’s fine,” I ventured, playing the ‘healer’ card while it still, perhaps, worked. “I enchanted him as he fell. You’ll find him back at home, healthy as can be.”

“Her name was Oat-Princess,” she said, “and she had the horse-gout.”

“Not anymore,” I replied.

The woman’s eyes narrowed even in the dark, and then she turned towards the dark mass ahead. I followed, because why not?

After a few steps I could make out the gas-lamps at either end, and the flickering lights that marked the windows of a cabin of sorts, suspended high over the ocean; three yards closer and I could see the guy-lines holding the massive shape to the cliff. It was a dirigible, floating gamely in the air, manned by dark shapes that heaved on the lines, and a gang-plank extended from the cabin to the cliff-road.

“As I was saying,” she said, as we navigated the dark path towards the air-ship, “after I reached a critical age, I simply refused to believe the stories.”

I said nothing, because she might bring up the horse again, and I had little faith in the promise of that avenue of conversation.

A dark figure ahead raised a hand in greeting, and Rikah called out: “I’ve got him.” At these words, the figure plucked a gas-lamp from a nearby rock and started carefully down the path towards us.

Rikah went on, in low tones: “When you washed up on shore this morning, and you looked nothing like what we had imagined, I knew that I had been right to be suspicious of the ‘official’ canon. It was like my whole life of skepticism had been validated. I knew that it was right for me to question the beliefs of the elders.” She turned to the dirigible, and the approaching man with the lamp.

Something was familiar about the man’s gait, I thought, but nothing I could put a finger on, nor a nose, nor any part of the anatomy, which was a shame, because it might have helped my recognition. I’ve touched many more things in life than I’ve seen in the darkness along a cliff-side, after all.

“I saw the air-ship coming during my mountain-top meditation luncheon,” she said. “I ran to meet it, thinking it might be full of treasure, or knowledge, or perhaps celery, which we’ve not had on the island since the Celery Blight in the seventh grade. But in that cabin it I found a poor soul, a pilgrim, more in need of your healing touch than any of those larking wretches back at the village. And I knew” — here she took my gnarled hand in two of her own, the yellow light from the approaching lantern playing across her smooth fingers, my heart beginning to thud loudly in my ribs — “I knew I could not believe the stories about your old grudges. I knew, that at the moment of truth, you would not shy from helping a soul in need simply because of his family name.”

As my hand came away from my chest, the bright-jade fell dim and black, and I blinked. The world looked red to me now, with the green light gone. The cliff-side glowed crimson like a post-card from Hell. I felt myself beginning to flush, for a reason I couldn’t quite pin-point.

The man with the lantern drew close and held the light high. “Hullo,” he said, squinting at me. “Sure looks a wreck, don’t he?”

I did know the man.

He was an Ectologist. He had worked for the Head Inspector, back in Easthillshireborough-upon-Flats.

He had worked for Peapoddy.

“Let’s go see the ol’ boss, then,” the Ectologist said, and Rikah leaned into me. I took a staggering step towards the air-ship, and then another, and then another, unable to stop or turn.

“Who are we going to see?” I croaked, my throat suddenly dry, the harsh salt spray of the sea below suddenly burning on my face.

Her voice was hot in my ear, burning all the way through my brain and out the other side. “Peapoddy, Grandfather. Peapoddy the Younger.”

NEXT: Face to Face

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