122. Mr. Blake’s Bizarre Birthday.

  

The twenty-eigth of November was the poet Mr. William Blake’s birthday, and Michael always had tea and cake with him on that day. The last few years his pupils, Don Alonso and Sancho, had also been present on this occasion, but this year it was Alpin who stood outside the door of Mr. Blake’s home.

“Has the cake arrived?” said Alpin, without even bothering to introduce himself. “I know you have cake today because every year my brother Darcy asks me not to come here so I won’t eat it. But he isn’t around, so he hasn’t been able to ask me not to come and here I am.”

It so happened Mr. Blake had just received a cake from the bakery of Fiona’s spa. It was very pretty, sky blue and grass green, and decorated with roses and a big pink butterfly for a candle. On the inside it was of a delicious chocolate.

Mr. Blake let Alpin in because he didn’t know who he was. Normally, you only let in people you do know, but Alpin is so self-confident people who don’t know him usually trust him.

Alpin went straight to the cake.

“It’s small,” he said. “Only for about eight people.”

And then he swallowed it in one gulp.

                                         

                   

 “But...who are you?” asked the astonished Mr. Blake.

Alpin’s mouth was full of other delicacies on the table, but he managed to say, “I’m Michael O’Toora’s cousin. You won’t need the cake. Your friends won’t be coming this year.”

“What? What have I done to them? Why have they visited you on me?”

“No,” mumbled Alpin, licking a dish to gather the crumbs on it. “You got this wrong.They didn’t send me. I came on my own initiative. I’ve been wanting to since I can remember.”

Alpin poured all the tea in the teapot in his mouth through the spout.

“Ow!” he said. “Hot!” But he didn’t waste a drop of it.

“Drink down the cream too, if you want to!” said Mr. Blake. “It’s all that’s left.”

“Thank you. There’s the sugar too. I’ll have that too if you don’t mind.”

“Mind? Mind?”

“I was really anxious to do this,” said Alpin. “Thanks for everything. Goodbye. And happy birthday!”

And he left slamming the door behind him.

When neither Michael nor anyone else showed up at the appointed hour, Mr. Blake put on his coat and went to find him. It was the only way he could get to know what had happened.

But Michael wasn’t at home. Don Alonso and Sancho weren’t at home either and no one there knew where they were at. 

“They’ve been missing since All Hallows’ Eve. If you find them or hear where they might be at, please tell us. We’re very worried they could have gone knight-erranting again. The odd thing is our housekeeper is gone too,” said Don Alonso’s niece.

Mr. Blake couldn’t go to the police because there are no police where he was at. There are ghosts of policemen in the world of the dead, but there is no police force in the fay world. However, there was someone he could ask for help. This someone was the Sun. The Sun sees a lot of what goes on almost everywhere, but the Sun hadn’t seen a thing. He had only seen that a great many people were missing. Too many for him not to have seen them vanish. Unless this had happened at night.

“Tell me where the starveling that ate up my birthday food is,” said Mr. Blake. “He might know what is happening.”