Fool on the Hill Page 24

  “Hobart looks pretty happy,” Puck observed, watching the old sprite give orders to the younger two.

  “This sort of thing always flatters him,” said Zephyr. “He’s Eldest, after all, and this gives him a chance to show off his history.”

  “What story are you going to ask for?”

  “I’m not sure. Something with butterflies in it, maybe.”

  The last slat of the chair was set in place and Hobart hoisted up to his seat; hands were raised for silence. The crowd—grown quite large in number—quieted itself, all eyes turning to the storyteller.

  “Ahem,” Hobart began, clearing his throat, unable to restrain a certain swell of pride in his voice, “I imagine I don’t need to introduce myself. You all know me, and I’ve met most of you at some time or other, though I might have a chore keeping certain names straight. As for this night—you will already have realized that my memory is less than perfect. Nevertheless I believe I can keep you entertained with that portion of the past that hasn’t yet slipped away from me. My only request is that you don’t ask for details of anything too personal.” His smile broadened. “Unless, of course, the details are about someone other than myself.”

  This brought polite laughter. Hobart spread his hands and nodded in recognition.

  “So . . .” he continued. “Let’s begin. What would you all like to hear about?”

  The crowd exploded with noise, every one of several hundred voices shouting out something different. Hobart listened intently, here and there actually managing to make out one of the requests.

  “Tell us about the Bell Tower!”

  “Let’s have a Midsummer’s Eve love story!”

  “Butterflies!” cried Zephyr. Hobart heard her voice above all the others, and nodded once more.

  “Enough!” he said; the crowd fell silent once more. “My granddaughter has just asked to hear a tale about butterflies. This happens to be an amazing coincidence, because I was just now thinking about a sprite named Falstaff, who earned the title Captain Caterpillar when he—”

  “Hobart!” a voice called out. Heads turned at the sound; such an interruption was a horrible breach of manners. Puck, for one, was not surprised to see Laertes, Saffron Dey’s brother, standing atop Aphrodite’s rib cage with a hand on the hilt of his sword.

  “I want a death story,” Laertes said, heedless of the stares and whispered comments of the crowd.

  “A death story?” Hobart replied, learning forward in his chair. “And what makes you think death is a more appropriate topic than butterflies?”

  “I don’t care about butterflies. I’ve lost family this past season, and not just me. Now winter is coming on; I’ll wager death has a stronger hand then than anything that flies. Even the Big People"—he gestured at Aphrodite—seem to realize that. Isn’t that why they call this the Feast of the Dead?”

  “I’m not sure they do call it that,” said Hobart, “and we certainly don’t. There are worse terrors than cold weather, Laertes.”

  “I don’t care. I want a death story.”

  “You want a lesson in etiquette,” Puck spoke up from the crowd. Laertes scowled at him, his hand tightened on his sword hilt. From his chair, Hobart saw the draw coming.

  “None of that!” the old sprite commanded, before Puck and Laertes could rush at each other; Hobart had not forgotten their duel at Saffron’s funeral. “You stop right now, or there’ll be no tales of any kind!”

  “You see?” Puck said to his opponent. “You ruin it for everybody!”

  Laertes looked across at Hobart. “Do I get my story, or not?”

  “Yes, yes, all right! If you insist on behaving like a spoiled child, I’ll give you what you want to quiet you. Puck, put that weapon away!”

  “Not just any death story,” Laertes added, as Puck reluctantly sheathed his sword.

  “You have a particular one in mind, do you?”

  “Yes. I want to hear about the War.”

  Hobart paled. “The War . . .”

  “Yes, why not?” said Laertes. “It’s the worst death story of all, isn’t it?

  Exactly what I’m in the mood for. So tell us the tale, the tale of the Great War. Tell us the tale of Rasferret the Grub.”

  V.

  Stephen George sat at the bar in the pavilion, sharing drinks with Lion-Heart and Shen Han.

  “Sorry, George,” the Bohemian King said, sipping his usual Midori in a shot glass, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Neither do I,” said the Tolkienian President.

  Lion-Heart finished the shot and called for another. “Understand, we should have invited you, and of course you’re welcome to stay now that you’re here, but . . .”

  “But you didn’t: send me the invitation,” George finished for him.

  “What did you say the wording was?” Shen Han asked. “ ‘The Lady of Tolkien House?’ Our standard invitation is from The Brothers of Tolkien House. We don’t even know anything about the Lady, except that she built this place.”

  “I think I might know something about her,” George muttered.

  They lapsed into a puzzled silence. Lion-Heart downed another Midori and glanced over at Shen Han, remembering something.

  “Hey,” he said. “I wanted to thank you. I was over by Galadriel’s Mirror a few minutes ago, and I noticed the Rubbermaid is gone. You got rid of it, eh?”

  Shen Han blinked. “I should have . . . I’m sorry, it must have slipped my mind. One of the others must have taken care of it. Noldorin, maybe.”

  “No matter,” said Lion-Heart. “So long as it’s gone.”

  “The Rubbermaid?” George queried. “What’s the Rubbermaid?”

  “Just a bad joke,” Lion-Heart told him. “It’s not important. Tell us when you got this invitation.”

  “I don’t know. Funny thing, but I can’t remember actually receiving it. I just know it was sitting next to my typewriter for the past couple weeks. I can’t—”

  He stopped. Across the bar and out the other side of the pavilion, he saw a shepherdess’ crook beckoning to him from behind a tree. He stood up.

  “George?”

  “You’ll have to excuse me,” George said. “I’ve got to go talk to somebody.”

  Shen Han looked around. “Who?”

  “Little Bo Peep. Catch you guys later, OK?”

  Nodding to both of them, George ducked around the bar and made for the tree. The crook vanished behind the trunk just before he reached it, reappearing from behind another tree some ten yards farther on.

  “Right,” George said. “Here we go again.” He allowed himself to be led, following the elusive shepherdess on a merry chase. Where Brian Garroway had called out almost constantly for his lady to slow down, George did not even bother; Calliope knew what she was about, and never once had he seen her give up a game until she had finished it. No sense fighting the flow.

  He blundered into an open glade, where the third House President, Lucius DeRond, sat astride an impossibly large mushroom, smoking a hookah. “This side of the ‘shroom makes you grow shorter,” Lucius intoned, blowing smoke rings at the sky, “and this side makes you grow longer.” George asked him what the middle of the mushroom did, but did not wait for an answer; for the slender pink crook beckoned him anew.

  Beyond the glade the trees grew denser, the fog thicker. Soon he was no longer following the crook at all, but rather the sound of soft footsteps that remained just ahead of him in the mist. Then even that faded. Lost in a world of swirling white—yet untroubled—George let his instinct guide him onward, confident that he had not been abandoned.

  The trees parted once more, opening into another clearing. George sensed this rather than saw it; it had become impossible to see farther than the tip of his nose. He walked forward, feeling carefully ahead for any obstructions, and suddenly she was there. His hand brushed the back of what he took for Bo Peep’s bonnet; his arms went out to embrace her as she turned. She too reached out, gripping the
hem of his cape as if to reassure herself of his identity. Then they were kissing, silently, and as the Lady’s fingers ran up and down his back in a deliriously wonderful way, it did not even occur to George to ask what had happened to her shepherdess’ crook.

  VI.

  “Rasferret the Grub . . .” Hobart began, his face grave. “Known also as Rasferret the Evil One, Rasferret the Destroyer. Precious few names you’ll find as feared as that one. Rasferret is our collective nightmare, our patron demon, still able to inspire terror after more than a century—though most of those who actually lived to see him did not live to tell about it. Just look at me, with the title of Eldest at an age that once would not have been considered remarkable. Back then, back when I was young and Julius was Eldest . . . in those days, old meant old. Rasferret’s War left us decimated, and changed in more ways than one.

  “And what was he, this demon? Some say he was the offspring of one of our own people who had mated with a rat, though I myself cannot imagine such a union; some say he was a true sprite, but evil, who having wandered long paths and years gradually took on the shape of his sins. Whatever his origin, his appearance is easily imagined from one of the names he came to be known by, ‘The Grub’: small, loathsome, twisted creature, eyes shining with the blue glow that is the hottest part of a flame. Pure malice his only motive, he came from some distant place to wage War against us—and mark you, Laertes, he came not during cold winter, but at the dawn of spring.

  “Some might wonder on first hearing this tale what threat such a creature could pose, so small and alone. But of course he was never alones he had the rats as his allies from the very beginning. Nor were they ordinary rats. For Rasferret also had magic to wield, magic I believe he must have stolen—I cannot see him creating his own—and through magic he changed the rats, made them to stand on two legs and bear swords, clubs, crossbows. With an army of perhaps five hundred he began a gradual assault on The Hill, meaning to annihilate us.

  “The first engagements were sneak attacks, Rasferret’s attempt to do as much harm as possible before being discovered. The rats would surround and surprise small groups of sprites in isolated areas, leaving no witnesses behind. My own brother was killed in just such a raid; for a long time we had no idea what had happened to him.

  “Then came the day when Rasferret at last felt secure enough to operate in the open. A wedding was due to be held at twilight in a garden-not this Garden, of course, but one not distant from here—with over two hundred guests in attendance. No sooner had the last of them arrived and the ceremony begun than the entire army of rats swept in, the sunset at their backs. Rasferret did not fight alongside them—a coward, he always hung back from battle—but nevertheless he made his presence known. Among the sprites was an exceptionally bright fellow by the name of Touchstone, an inventor and tinkerer by trade. Ht: escaped the carnage on the back of a grey squirrel, riding with all speed to a great hollowed-out tree stump where he had housed his latest creation.” Hobart’s eyes lit briefly on Puck. “It was a vehicle, a land vehicle with wide treads for locomotion, only now in his moment of need Touchstone used it as a battle wagon, returning to the garden as quickly as possible and overrunning the marauders, killing some and panicking the others into a rout. But then Rasferret sent a bit of his own soul into the heart of the machine, and all at once the vehicle took on a life of its own, running down sprites now before ramming itself into a tree and killing its driver. And that was how we became acquainted with the most terrible of Rasferret’s powers, the power of animation—”

  VII.

  The woman was not alive. Brian Garroway knew that even before he touched her, for the figure that stood facing him—the fog had thinned somewhat, and he could make out her contours if not her features—held far too rigid a posture to be flesh and blood. With open palm Brian reached out to touch her midriff, feeling first the textured springiness of leather and then a hardness beneath that could only be plastic. All at once the mystery was made clear.

  He reached up to stroke the mannequin’s cheek, touched her coarse hair, wondering all the while how she had gotten here, out in this boondock fringe of the Garden that Brian had decided must be intended for hazing House pledges. As he puzzled over the matter his hand traced the curve of a bare plastic shoulder, down along the arm, into the swell of her left palm.

  “You haven’t seen my girlfriend, have you?” Brian asked the Rubbermaid, part of him hoping there was no one around to hear him acting so foolishly. And that was when the mannequin’s fingers closed over his hand.

  He jumped back, jerking his hand free; the Rubbermaid swayed in place but did not fall over. Brian flattened against the trunk of a tree, eyes cranked wide open.

  Did not, could not, did not—

  “Aurora!” Not a shout this time; a shriek. Brian’s feet found the good sense to run and he bolted away, braying a panic-stricken litany: “Aurora! Jesus! Auro-o-o-ora . . .!”

  VIII.

  “How many battles all told? That question has no answer. Three weeks the War lasted, and in all that time I doubt if a minute passed without some skirmish taking place somewhere on The Hill. Our losses mounted hourly, while Rasferret’s army continued to grow in size; for there were always more rats to be recruited. New troops issued regularly from The Boneyard, where Rasferret had set up his main camp.”

  Zephyr nodded understanding, remembering her grandfather’s many cautions about that place—nor had she forgotten the rats that had attacked her and Puck. Meanwhile Laertes, who had gradually moved up through the crowd to stand directly before Hobart’s chair, asked impatiently: “But what about the Big People? Surely they must have noticed something unusual, with such a large conflict going on right beneath their noses.”

  “And why do you assume that?” Hobart responded. “Understand me, Laertes, I respect human beings and love them dearly, but I’m told that on occasion they don’t even notice their own wars. Oh, it’s true enough they were aware of some of the damage—their newspapers were full of vandalism stories—but for the most part I doubt their minds could have accepted the truth of what was going on. Therefore they didn’t see it.”

  “But surely Rasferret saw them,” Laertes protested. “And with an army of rats, and this animation power . . .”

  “No,” said Hobart, obviously troubled. “No, he never once directly attacked any of the Big People. Naturally I’ve wondered at that myself, but I can’t claim to know the reason. Perhaps his magic wasn’t strong enough, perhaps he simply feared to risk it . . . to be certain you would have to ask Rasferret personally, and I’m relieved to say that’s not possible.”

  Laertes nodded. “His downfall . . . tell me about it.”

  “We got lucky,” Hobart expained. “That is the simple truth of it. We had a plan, of course, but all plans, all but the most certain, have luck to thank for their success. The strategy was born in desperation; at the end of three weeks’ fighting our numbers had sunk so low that we knew any more losses would finish us. Hecate, who was great-grandmother to Macduff, there"—Macduff nodded with grim pride—"led the larger of two contingents on an assault against The Boneyard. Her task was to stage a planned retreat at a given time in order to draw away as many of the rats as possible. Then a second, smaller group, led by Eldest Julius, would sneak in and attempt to kill Rasferret, in the hope that without their leader, the rats would return to their natural state and disband. Hecate did well for her part, achieving the desired goal with minimum casualties; but of that second group, I alone survive to tell the tale.”

  “You killed him, then?”

  Hobart hesitated only the briefest instant. “Of course we killed him. You wouldn’t be here, making such a nuisance of yourself, Laertes, if we hadn’t.”

  “But how? How did Rasferret meet his end?”

  Another, oh-so-brief hesitation. “Julius killed him. Ran him through with a magic sword.” Hobart touched a place below his left breastbone. “Right here. The Grub crumbled to dust and blew away o
n the wind.”

  Laertes’ eyes narrowed. “Julius struck the killing blow? But then how did he die? You said you were the only survivor.”

  “The rats killed him, obviously. Don’t get she idea that Rasferret sent his entire army after Hecate. We still had a good fight on our hands.”

  “So the rats didn’t disband, as you’d hoped.”

  “They did, but not immediately.”

  Laertes shook his head. “What about this business with the magic sword? And the crumbling to dust? I never heard that part of the story before. My Granduncle Claudius told me—”

  “Claudius?” Hobart burst out, red-faced. “My dear fellow, Claudius was even younger than I at the time, he fought in Hecate’s contingent, and further I don’t recall ever giving him the derails of what happened in The Boneyard. It’s no wonder he’s got his facts wrong.”

  Macduff had moved up to stand beside Laertes now. “Ayc, laddic,” he said to the young sprite, “and since ye’vc got it all straight at last, how’s about movin’ yerself over so as to make way for more cheerful tales? I’m sure Hobart’s grown tired o tellin this one.”

  “Just one more thing,” insisted Laertes pushing his luck. “How do you know it won’t happen again some day?”

  “I imagine,” Hobart told him, “that if Rasferret were capable of returning from the grave, he would have done so by now.”

  “But there might come another like him,” Laertes suggested. “A second Grub, wandering in search of a War to wage.”

  “No,” said Hobart firmly.

  “Why not?”