57. Five Kegs, One of Them of Rum

The kaphre that lived in this banyan tree was dangerous indeed. When he crawled out from it he managed to make Mr. Finn lose his balance and unfortunately for him and for us the poor man hit his head against a rock when he fell and was knocked out before the first round could start. The pirate kaphre then grabbed hold of one of Alpin’s legs with one hand and of unconscious Mr. Finn with the other and dragged them into his tree.

Michael and I could have fled while the  pirate was at this, but we didn’t. Michael later told me that one thing was not to be able to teach a difficult pupil anything and another to let the kaphres take him. He refused to admit he also stayed to help his cousin and insisted that Alpin deserved what had happened to him. I’m not sure why I didn’t run. Perhaps so I would have a story to tell, or perhaps because I felt like a monkey before a snake. People like Michael and I can do little against monsters if we haven’t had time to think up a plan.So we were soon at the kaphre’s mercy ourselves.

There is nothing worse for a fairy person than to be kidnapped. Since we are practically immortal, we aren’t much scared of death, but we do fear the loss of liberty. And the kaphre turned out to be a much more disagreeable kidnapper than Mr. Finn had been. To begin with, he promised that he would eat us, which meant we would end up being prisoners in his evil brain, for that is where fairy people go when swallowed.

For the moment he was satisfied to have us bound and hanging from the roots of his tree house, all save Mr. Finn, whom he took outside again and tied to a tree and ordered to watch the horizon and give warning should anyone approach the island.

Salty Boogerbeard, for such was the pirate kaphre’s name, was an assiduous reader of the Goodley Book of the Bizarre, because he was mentioned in it more than once for things like having been the spirit to have strangled more octopuses with their own tentacles and his bare hands. This is why he had identified Mr. Finn and knew exactly who he was dealing with.

As for the rest of us, Salty had quite a good time laughing at us, especially at Alpin, who tortured us with his screams demanding food. Salty was not at all bothered by Alpin’s raving shouts. He said to him they sounded better than celestial music and reminded him of the hell he had lived in when he was a kid. He even got a little sentimental.

As I have said before, fairy people don’t need to eat much unless there is something wrong with them, as with Alpin. But we do need to drink at least a few drops of dew with a certain frequency if we don’t want to have a hard time.

Soon our thirst was unbearable, but Salty, instead of being merciful, had a diabolical idea. He gagged us and dragged us out of the tree and made us sit behind  Mr. Finn. Then he put five kegs in front of Mr. Finn. The first was labelled “Rum,” the second “Coke,” the third “Water,” the fourth “Port,” and the fifth “Sherry.”

                        

“I’ll only let you blokes drink if the dummy can identify the barrel that contains water. Hardy, har, harrrr!” laughed Salty.

Poor Mr. Finn must have felt awful, but always gallant, he rallied, decided to try. It took him a while to choose a keg. Or an eternity. Or perhaps only the time he needed to study the five “doodles” on the barrels.

  

“The one in the center,” he said when he spoke.

“Well, I’ll be!” exclaimed Salty, much perplexed. “How could you tell?”

“I have seen one of those doodles a thousand times in the film I have been watching. I remembered it appeared when the blind girl played with water. I bet on that one.”

“You watched the film with subtitles?” asked Salty. “Hmm. I should have thought of that.”

“Congratulations, Curmudgeon!” I couldn’t help crying out, when Salty ungagged me. “Do you know what this means? It means you can read!”

I congratulated Michael too, but Michael said the merit was all his pupil’s for the great effort he had made.

Salty behaved like a good sport and allowed us to drink from whichever keg we chose to celebrate Curmudgeon’s triumph over illiteracy. He had changed his mind about eating us because we were cultured people and that might affect his free will when we became lodged in his brain. What he  now wanted was to be paid a peculiar ransom. And he ordered me to write my parents a letter demanding that one of them come to negotiate with him.

I did as Salty asked and wrote a letter as long as our Odyssey because I am not much good at summarizing. Salty put it in a bottle and flung that into the sea. I feared it would take ages for the bottle to be found, but Salty told me sea spirits were curious beings and one was sure to read it and take it to The Jealous Merrow Pub in no time, as he had sent it care of Lira Anadyomene.