179. The Can of Worms

 

179. The Can of Worms

When I woke up the morning after dinner with my brothers, I had a lot to think about. I thought how Thym and Dev and maybe Ces too probably got together at least on Friday evenings and how I had only been able to participate in last night’s dinner because Alpin was not with me. Before Alpin became an apple, I couldn’t take him anywhere. He would have eaten up all the food at a dinner like the one I had just been to in a fleeting second. And my brothers would not have taken kindly to that. I thought of all the fun I had probably missed because I had to go everywhere with Alpin and that meant going nowhere. I also realized that these last lost years, when I had wandered about aimlessly or sat under trees in melancholic places were a consequence of the fact that my purpose in life was to befriend Alpin and keep him out of trouble. That was why I didn’t know what to do. As an apple, Alpin had not made much trouble. Not until he got me to declare a war. Until then, I had had nothing to do. I couldn’t spend day and night in his mother’s dining room watching the little red apple snooze among the wax fruits, and nodding away myself. I’m not a treasure guarding dragon.

That was where we had left him, Thistle and I, after she had torn him away from the Sherbananians. He said he was tired and needed to rest and recover from all the excitement of the war. It was years since he had had so much excitement in his life. So we left him there with his mother and, frankly, I hadn’t given him a thought since. But now that I heard he might be in trouble, I couldn’t find it in me to shrug and look away.  

I left my rooms at about ten thirty in the morning. From my window, I had seen a carriage with the initial G and a prince’s crown over this letter approaching the palace. That could only be Uncle Gentlerain coming in state to have a state  brunch with Dad just as Thymian had said he would. I went downstairs very, very slowly. I wanted him to arrive before I did so  I could eavesdrop a little, like Thym had suggested I do.

Dad and Uncle Gen were having their brunch outside, in the gardens. The palace gardens are many and varied, but there are two contiguous  gardens in which it is always the twenty first of June. In one of these is Dad’s favorite rose tree bower, and that is where I found him and his brother. I hid behind the side of an arch of red rose  bushes and got down to the business of spying on them.

“That apple is a can of worms,” my uncle was saying.  

“Suppose we eat him?” I heard Dad suggest. “That might make us  able to see everything there is to see ourselves.”

“You or I? Or are we going to split him in half and then we each get to see half of what is going on and I have to go everywhere  with you, together like Siamese twins all the while,  to get the whole picture?”

“Speaking of twins, your twin is sure to want a piece of this. She would hate it if we could see everything and she couldn’t see any better than an eyeless needle . We might have to cut the fruit in three. Between two, things are easy to divide. One cuts and the other chooses. But it’s not as easy between three. We’re sure to quarrel.”

 “Seriously, Obs, we have to do something about this kid. Speaking of eating him is just wasting time.”

“I thought he might be like MacMor. You know, the salmon of wisdom. The one that eats all those magic hazelnuts and then gets eaten and makes someone smart and then reappears mysteriously safe and sound in his pool without anyone’s having….I won’t say what because  we are eating.”

“You think the kid might be edible? I mean, that it would be okay to eat him because he would be back to be eaten again in no time?”

“Do stop saying the kid. He’s an apple. You’re making me feel like an ogre.”

“He’s not an apple and he’s not a kid. He’s a revolting can of worms. Seething with problems. Whatever. I’m not eating that can of worms even if  it looks like a mouldy apple. And neither are you, because you fear the fruit’s parents might raise hell.”

“You know why we are here wasting time arguing about this apple? Because  you are reluctant to just make it disappear. You’ve done dirty work before,  Gentie. Just brace yourself and do away with the apple. You know ways.”

“If there were something I could give the Dullahans, I would just buy the apple and hide it somewhere safe. But they don’t need anything. They have Darcy. He gives them whatever they want. Sometimes I think I would like to hate Darcy,” said Uncle Gen. “Darcy is the only person I have ever considered envying. But I’m not sure if what he has is a gift or a curse. One never knows what it is like to be like someone else. You have to live it to know it. But it is so easy for Darcy to solve problems and it takes me such an effort to fix even the simplest issues.”

 “Unfair,” nodded Dad. “That’s what it is. Fortunately or unfortunately, I can´t tell which, Darcy hardly ever uses his gift. He´s better than I am at going with the flow. Well, most of the time. You know, Gen, maybe we should speak to our cousin. You know, the Puca that jinxed the kid.”

“Garth? Why?”

“Maybe we can get Garthie to change the apple back into the odious brat it used to be. Between you and I, I think we could persuade Garthie. There must be something he wants or maybe we can just bully him.”

“What good would that do?”

“The kid might stop seeing things. When he was a kid, all he saw was food.”

“That is not exactly so. You know the saying blinded by hunger? It applies to this case. My theory is this kid was always a sharpsight kid. Nobody noticed he was because like you say, all that interested him was starving other people. But I noticed. I noticed because one time he noticed me. Nobody has ever noticed me when I am in disguise. But one time I was pretending to be a honey bee and the kid spotted me. He didn’t know who I was of course, but he noticed the bee I was was no normal bee. I noticed he noticed.”

“You go about disguised as a honey bee?” Dad was  going to jeer at Uncle Gen. I saw it in his shrinking eyes and the rising corners of his mouth.

“A fly would attract less attention, but that is the devil’s disguise,” explained Uncle Gentlerain. “I don’t want to be confused.”   

Dad cracked up.

“Have you ever pricked anyone? Me, for example?”

“If you are not dead, you can be sure I haven’t,” said Uncle Gen. “What I am trying to say is that I think this kid was born with a  gift of wholesight. He was so busy spreading famine that he never knew what a great gift he had. But he does now. Imagine this kid, a ravenous kid again, seeing all the food in the world and out to destroy it with a vengeance.”

“You always were a fatalist.”

“Is there nothing that worries you? But, yes, maybe we should speak to Garth. Just to ask him how this apple curse works. We don’t know how long the spell might last or what. At least maybe we will know what to expect.”

I had heard enough to know Dad and Uncle Gen where nowhere near knowing what to do about Alpin. Which meant he was not in immediate peril. So I decided to speak out and ask if I could have a cinnamon roll before my breakfastless stomach began to growl.

“You come here and sit down with us,” said Uncle Gen, without turning round to look at me. “It’s okay, Arley, we know you are there, hiding in the bushes like Ces does. We wanted to invite you to this brunch, but we also wanted to see if you would pop up uninvited or not.”

“Why?”

“Just to know who and what we are dealing with. If you have any ideas what to do with your dear friend we  would like to hear them.”

“Maybe you should ask him what he wants,” I said, joining them.  I noticed that the table had indeed been set for three from the start.

“No  way,” said Dad. “I asked that brazen kid what he wanted once thinking he would ask for a bag of candy and he wanted Heather and I’m not giving my daughter to someone like him.”

“What are your plans for this afternoon?” Uncle Gen asked me.

“I mean to participate in a reading of several chapters of Don Quijote. It’s  the 23rd of April.”

“At our sponsor’s house?”

“At Don Alonso’s. A few of us are each  going to read a chapter in his honor. Our favorite chapter. “

“I will read chapter XXIII of the second part,” said Uncle Gentlerain.

“Where?” I asked.

“At our sponsor’s house,” repeated Uncle Gen. “You think you are the only knight Don Alonso has sponsored?”