The Wondermark Gazette

At first I thought I might dig for hours among those sloshing mounds of beached corpses that had been Peapoddy’s vile air-ship fuel without ever finding the remains of Abu Fromage. It was heroic to think of him as one so pure of spirit that his passing would leave no heap of jerkied meat behind for ravenous earth-worms — perhaps, at the moment that the dirigible exploded, he had vanished into an aethereal dimension; or else perhaps he had sublimated whole-sale into angel-dust. Or, even if he had left a meat-heap, it might be lost among the nameless bodies and dirigible wreckage that now choked the island’s shore-line — the old man’s small stature, and, er, lack of legs (which, I admit, was my bad), seemed to make this down-right inevitable.

But in fact I located his body after but a brief search of about four seconds. Turns out, I was standing on it.

I fished it out of the water and held aloft that droopy mess of floppy skin and liver-spots. There was none of Abu Fromage in this sad-looking bone-bag; none of his majesty, or his carriage, or even a hint of that signature cheese-musk. In this, at least, I was glad — for I could return it violently to the sea guiltlessly, which I did at once, because it was slimy and kelpy and gross. I don’t want that under my finger-nails.

With the splash came a creeping certainty, sinking slowly and steadily to the sea-floor of my awareness until it came to rest, a jagged fact half-buried in the silt. Something I knew was true; perhaps the only thing. Abu Fromage was dead. There was no arguing the fact. He would not speak to me again, except, perhaps, in dreams.

My dream haunted me still, and depressed me in equal measure — for unlike most normal dreams, of hat-making or candy-races or gleeful, sensual outhouse-arson — there was nothing obvious I could point to upon waking to discredit its twisted somnambulous logic. In my hat-making dreams I always tended to fumble with thread, because I had lobster-claws for some reason. Upon waking, I could always breathlessly tap my clammy digits together if I needed to verify their non-crustaceanity. Likewise with the candy-racing dreams: no matter what I might believe in the night, come dawn I could easily prove that I wasn’t really an Italian simply by making a quick visit to the water-closet.

But for all I knew, Josiah had survived being thrown (by me) from the deck of the Flopsy Bunny, made his way to Ireland, and found the Tome — who could say? And if that was within the realm of possibility…then what about the rest of it? Was Grenadon’s cave merely a volcanic death-trap?

Was my sweet Lara already dead?

Whether Peapoddy, in death, really had cursed me to stay among the living (thus chaining me to the myriad pains inherent to mortality, and depriving me of the animus-free delight that was apparently gifted to the departed like a complimentary sewing-kit for the soul) or whether that was an invention of my fevered, dirigible-fleeing imagination, it mattered not, for the result was the same. With every motion, I was now conscious of the anvil-weight sitting heavily and metaphorically atop my still-living frame. I perceived, for the first time, how my hastily-embarked-upon quest had always been fuelled more by hazy optimism than by any legitimate sense of what to do or how to go about it properly. I’d seen no fault to this approach, for just such a slap-dash approach had served me well thus far in life, whether on the cheese-wharves or the jungles of the Americas or in the Manor upon Waverly Hill.

But like everything in life, from livers to paper umbrellas to one-legged bar-stools, it only worked until it didn’t. And now every path before me seemed doubtful, and silly.

By the time the villagers’ corpse-waggon deposited me back at the out-skirts of the town, the only course of action that appealed to me even remotely was to shave what was left of my scorched and be-seaweeded beard, track down a proper velour vest-coat, and present myself to Rikah as myself — not as Grenadon, nor a Siamese spice-merchant with a speech-impediment, nor anyone else. Merely a dashing stranger with a rakish grin and murky past, who none-the-less somehow commanded remarkable insight into the issues that troubled her. (After all, she’d blabbed for hours about herself during that long ride from the forest to the air-ship, thinking she was speaking to her kindly ancestor, and I could have a keen memory for chick-blather when I needed to.)

Or, I realised, I could also earn her devoted love by black-mailing her with knowledge of her cahoot with the Peapoddy clan: the villagers’ enemy as much as my own. Either this plan or the other seemed to me honourable, as well as probably pretty fun; I would let circumstance decide my specifics of my tactic. I liked to stay adaptable. It made me feel competent.

Besides, it was probably about that time again. Time to start over with a new life — I’d done it before; I could easily leave everything behind again. It might be the only way to dislodge the dream-anvil from my metaphorical chest — weighed down, as it was, by obligations, doubt, and the spectre of having made foolish choices.

(It seemed to me that a large dog, or perhaps a small ogre-pottamus, might weigh exactly the same as an anvil, and yet the dream’s metaphor had featured the object that could not be lured away with old meat (as could the dog) or compelled into hibernation by extended oral discourse about the relative merits of oaken cart-wheels vs. maple (the ogre-pottamus had a renowned and severe physiological reaction to the odour emitted by humans engaged in pedantry). But an anvil could only be hammered upon, and even that would probably drive it, metaphorically, even deeper into my metaphorical chest.)

But though everything I had been working towards now seemed insufferably silly, I couldn’t just forget it all — not because of a dream, for Jehu’s sake. Heck, two nights ago I’d dreamt that I was slapping a baby with a fish, but it didn’t mean I should do it. (Not that I didn’t want to — but the point is, I didn’t. I didn’t even have a baby handy, and I’d found the village’s orphan-foundry closed at that hour.)

No. Despite how easy it would be to just forget all about everything and start over, in a new place with a new life — the doubts lingered. Maybe Lara was alive. Maybe Josiah wasn’t.

Clang! The metaphorical hammer fell heavily upon that black iron, and I faltered a step from the blow. The anvil was sunken deep.

I had been walking now for some time, and as was my habit while engaging in deep, considered self-pity, I had been holding my hands firmly over my ears and eyes, the better to concentrate on my own miserableness. But as the air about me seemed changed, somehow, I lowered my hands — and found myself in the town’s central square.

It was a bustling hub-bub of activity. Busy-looking folk hurried to and fro; shop-keepers hawked tourist-wares from a hundred shabbily-built stalls while leprous pilgrims begged for alms or opiates under-foot. Thousands of visitors, most gravely ill and disgusting, crowded the eye-scape. The place had turned into a city.

A sickly goat wearing half a cable sweater staggered across my path, and I nearly tripped over a sicklier child giving chase with what appeared to be blood-stained knitting-needles. A shambling, goitered woman behind me did trip o’er the caprine, and fell to the ground with a clatter of weak bones. Within seconds, I watched a dozen scabby hands strip her of anything resembling value: her shoes went to a scowling man for an early supper; her finger-nails to an urchin to re-sell for dirt money; her hair to a Saxon for dental-floss.

These disgusting people had all come to the Isle of Yam-Runners to be healed by Grenadon — and the locals, the villagers. had built an economy on them. I saw stalls selling second-hand kitten-wire next to stalls selling “replacement kidneys” clearly made of orange-peel (and doing a brisk business). One creaking shack rented various miserable steed-animals for “Site-Seeing Tour’s [sic]”; another, next door, rented chewing-gum. It was truly Enlightenment capitalism at work.

And then I stopped. I had it — an idea so brilliant that I didn’t even care when a fat man stumbled into me from behind; I didn’t even budge an inch. A passer-by even tipped me for my perfect performance. I was a man possessed.

I couldn’t know if my dream had been real. If it had been, I should give up now — I had already lost. I could still start a new life.

But if it wasn’t real, there was still a chance I could prevail. I should persist with the search for the Tome.

I had no way to get word back to Easthillshireborough-upon-Flats; I couldn’t learn if Lara lived or not. I didn’t know if Josiah was drifting near the sea-floor this very moment, or if he was in Ireland clutching the Tome in his idiot fingers. There was nothing I could put to the test, to pit the dream against verifiable reality, as I had with the lobster-claws or the Italian thing…

Except the cave. It was here, on the island. I could rent a steed from “Site Seeing Tour’s” and make haste for that far mountain-top. Then I would see with my waking eyes whether it was truly bright with molten rock — or if it was something else entirely.

NEXT: Trapped

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