176. The Volunteer

176. The Volunteer

Of course, everything that had happened since Uncle Gentlerain’s return had made my sisters and me very curious as to why he had ever left. Since he had been missing for so long, people were speaking about him and his sudden return, but they didn’t seem to know much about his past either. And we felt it wasn’t convenient to ask too many questions. But here and there we began to pick up bits of the puzzle.

Most of the people I had spoken with spoke well of Uncle Gentlerain. I learned he had done most of them, or someone they knew, a favour or two. I gathered he was the kind of person who goes about doing good in a casual way. He wasn’t a deliberate do-gooder, I think, but just someone nice who is ready to help people who cross his path. Other people said it had surprised them to learn he was a bad lot, because they had always thought him a capital fellow. These people were unable to specify what Uncle Gentlerain had done to be considered bad. No one exactly knew. I suspected it had to do with Mr. Binky because my Mum had said something like that when Uncle Gentlerain became a problem for my father, Dad had let Mr. Binky loose on him. Unfortunately, not too many people remembered Mr. Binky and many had never even understood what he had been trying to do for the world. But there were the Minced Forest Leafies, who have the memory of an elephant and  have connections everywhere and who, once I returned to my former life and began to spend time with them, sent me to the palace garden Leafies.

These Leafies are a little special, not more suspicious or mistrustful when questioned, but a a little fuller of their own importance. They did, however, contribute information. Centuries before, they had heard my father and Mr. Binky chatting under a rosetree. Now, Mr. Binky  was the spoiled son of the  richest family in Fayland. His parents were so rich they even handled mortal money, and many folks said it was a wonder these people had not become mortal, so closely did they deal with the mortal world. Mr. Binky had grown up observing the mortals and he had learned so much about them that he wanted to make use of what he had learned. He was not yet Prime Minister or anything like that, but he had learned from the mortals what taxes were and he was trying to persuade my father to make them mandatory in our kingdom. My father knew very well that people as independent as his were would never agree to do things the way humans did. Taxes three hundred years ago were a mostly cruel thing in the mortal world. I don’t think they did much to help the underpriviledged. Probably all they ever gave anyone was a kind of protection against invaders but if one stops to think that the army was not totally professional and peasants and such had to leave their ploughs and go fight for their lords when needed, that kind of protection didn’t seem to mean much. Mr. Binky was explaining to my father what taxes would be like in the future, for he read all sorts of documents that speculated about the future and were written by prophets, revolutionaries and time travellers and such. He had come to believe that the existence of two worlds was a mistake. He could not change the humans, but he thought it would be easy to make us as much like mortals as possible. He did not see that this was disadvantageous to us, and of no advantage to the humans, only that one single world would be much easier for him to govern in his own manner. The thing is that my father  was so tired of hearing Mr. Binky recommend taxation that he told him that if he could get just one fairy to pay taxes, he would consider making them mandatory. The catch was that the said fairy had to be Uncle Gentlerain.

Now Uncle Gentlerain had fallen foul of Dad because at that time everybody was always comparing them both and always to Gentlerain’s advantage. Dad wasn’t exactly jealous. It is that when you are king, having evil tongues say that so and so does all sorts of things while you do nothing is never convenient. Uncle Gen had been particularly busy back then. Aside from fixing sundials and sand clocks and modern clocks that had stopped ticking before anyone got down to calling the clockmakers and the likes, he was also doing old ladies a lot of favors. He did  poor old ladies favors like helping them carry loads wherever they had to or giving them all sorts of stuff such as heaters and infallible cures for aches and pains, good for those who couldn’t afford to do much sleeping. He did lazy, rich old ladies favors like telling them what they should serve for important dinners or who would agree to marry whom. This last he could do, not because he was a gossip but because he had married into a large family that was always very well informed. Gen was also extremely popular with the palace servants, because he had been  and was the only young person there to tidy his own room so well it almost never needed cleaning. Also he would take the trouble to fly over instead of step on freshly scrubbed,  still wet floors. He also dropped by the kitchen now and again, not just to raid the fridge, but to see what was cooking and learn about food lending the cooks a hand. His rings never dropped off his fingers even when he saw someone taking out the garbage and said, “I’m on my way out. I’ll throw that away for you.” It came to pass that whenever someone noticed that something was in working order, someone else  would say, “Gentlerain fixed it!”  Whenever someone’s problem was solved, it was “Gentlerain solved it!” And it was true. Gentlerain had put his hand in all he could, in a very casual and natural way and before anyone else had even noticed what was amiss or remembered to fix things. This happened so much that Dad finally cried “The butler did it!” in exasperation.  And that was how Gentlerain became “The Butler” to Dad.  

But to Mr. Binky, Uncle Gentlerain was “The Volunteer.” Mr.  Binky strongly disapproved of anyone who did voluntary work. He thought there were a great many things people should only be doing if the state paid them to. And he had a mortal hatred of charity, greater than Ebenezer Scrooge’s, though for obviously different reasons. As for solidarity, Binky had his own way of understanding this concept.  So whenever Uncle Gen was about to do something pro bono, Mr. Binky would pop up and try to discourage him. When persuasion by patient description of future wonders thanks to taxes didn’t work, Mr. Binky began to try  other methods. First of all, he tried to get the palace servants to accuse Gentlerain of labour intrusion. According to Mr. Binky, Gentlerain had no right to make his own bed, because there was a maid for that. The maid refused to report on Gentlerain, and the rest of the servants joined in a petition to keep Mr. Binky out of the kitchen and the servants' quarters. Having failed to obtain the support of the servants, Mr. Binky decided to fine Uncle Gen. He fined Uncle Gen for so many things that Uncle Gen would have gone  broke if he’d had to pay the fines. But since they were not legal fines, Gen didn’t have to. But he kept accumulating inexistent fines and was also guilty of refusing to pay nonexistent taxes. Word spread around that Gentlerain owed Mr. Binky tons of money or something like it and wasn’t paying. That was odd, because Gentlerain was famous for granting fairy favours and never demanding they be returned. He seemed to have enough to get by and lots to spare. But Mr. Binky was the son of the richest family in fairyland, people who actually handled money, unlike most fairies, who only did favors and that Binky should be chasing Gentlerain everywhere fussing about money had to mean something. People speculated it might be because Gen had gambling debts, or had somehow fleeced Mr. Binky. Nobody minded much, but there were rumours. Rumours most people denied believing but repeated.  So much I learned from the palace garden Leafies. In brief, they said Mr. Binky was mad but Uncle Gentlerain was being driven crazy.  

And then, to my surprise, the last person on earth I expected to know something about all this told me an important part of the story. One afternoon I went to have tea with Heather and Thistle. Heather had invited me because she said there was something I had to know. When I arrived at her ideal home, the first thing I saw was a cheeky pipnosher leaping about her.

“Look out, Heather!” I yelled, fearing vengeance was afoot and the pipnoshers had come to harm my sisters in retaliation.

"Stop!" shouted Heather, keeping me from squashing it. “That´s a gift. From Thymian. He’s resurrected the pipnoshers he experimented with and turned them into collectible toys. He had four. He kept one, gave one to Thistle and another to me. The fourth is for you. He’ll find time to give it to you one of this days, he said. They’re a cross between a pet and a robot. Look how cute they look dressed like ancient Egyptians.”

I noticed there were, indeed, two pipnoshers growling at me from the tea table in Egyptian profile.

“They’re making noises,” I said.  I didn’t say the noises sounded hostile, but they did to me. “That’s new. Do they still spit venom? Like maybe in our tea?”

“Only rose water. And you have to tickle them if you want them to do it. They only eat sugar. Especially sugar cane. And they mumble and growl in Egyptian. Thymian says it is blessings and not curses. He should know, he’s a recognized interworld authority in ancient curses. Don’t you think they are much improved?”

“Adorable,” I nodded. But I still felt uncomfortable around these creatures. 

I had barely nodded when another guest arrived. This was Nimbo di Limbo, the little gargoyle elf that got to eat king cake every day of the year. We were very pleased to see each other. He asked me where I had been for so long and invited me to have breakfast any day I chose with him and his mother, the fairy lady who slept a lot but was doing a lot less of that since Darcy had asked her not to. Nimbo looked very happy until Heather served us huge blueberry cupcakes and said Nimbo had given her the Granny Milksops notebook where she had found the recipe for them. Nimbo suddenly became very serious. I thought this was because maybe he had stolen the notebook from someone back when he was a pitifully petty thief, but I was wrong. Uncle Gentlerain had given it to his mother. He told us the whole story, which will be related in the next chapter.