186. Three Hundred Years to a Historian

186. Three Hundred Years to a Historian

Dreamboat trotted off to join the horses from Mum’s stables. He said I would see him at the palace starting the next morning.

I turned to Uncle Gen and said, “It must be dreadful to have to negotiate with a man who can’t be defeated.”

“There may be…a way,” murmurred Uncle Gen, almost as if he were talking to himself.

“No! Really? Did you employ it?”

“I never will. Do I need to make you forget what I just said?” Uncle Gen asked me. “Because I shouldn’t have said that.”

I shook my head vehemently.

“Hush, now then,” said Uncle Gen. “This conversation hasn’t taken place. Let´s go transform Alpin before his mother freaks out again.”

Uncle Gen went up to Mum and Mrs. Dullahan.

“I'm doing it,” he said to Miss Aislene. “Now if you like.”

I noticed he didn’t look into Miss Aislene’s eyes when he said that.

Miss Aislene didn’t hesitate a second. She popped Apple Alpin out of a certain part of her dress and handed him to Uncle Gen. Mum again hit Gen with her fan, this time on the back of the neck, when he stopped for a moment to glance at Aislene.

“Ow!” protested Uncle Gen.

“Are you stupid or pretending to be?” Mum asked him.

Uncle Gen shook his head and drew away with Alpin in the palm of his hand. He set the apple on the green grass and rubbed his neck a little before producing the tiniest black cloud I have ever seen with his other hand. He blew at it softly, and it floated right on top of the apple. It rained on Alpin, and then dissolved into thin air.

Alpin appeared right there, kneeling in the grass. He was not an apple and he was not a  strange young man. He was Alpin. And he proved he was by saying he was hungry.

While Mrs. Dullahan dropped to the ground beside Alpin and screamed and shook and gave her child an even more dramatic welcome than Uncle Even had staged for Uncle Gen, Mum whispered to her brother, “You shouldn’t have bothered to make rain. You should have peed on that egomaniac.”

“You wouldn’t have liked her to see that,” Uncle Gen whispered back. “Don’t, do not, hit me! I’m fine.”

Mrs. Dullahan asked Alpin what he would like to eat and told him all about the free stufff they were giving out at the third fairy ring. Alpin asked us if the oggies at the kobold dwarfs’  booth had any arsenic on the thick end. Uncle Gen immediately asked Alpin if he was allergic to cobalt.  Alpin said he had no idea if he was or not. Uncle Gen said the pasties might indeed have arsenic on the folded edge too. Alpin then said he would have the bangers instead just in case, and Uncle Gen suggested his mother take him home to celebrate there. It was too soon for Alpin to enter into conflict with belicose dwarfs again. Mrs. Dullahan understood and took Alpin home with her. As for us, we went back to Uncle Richearths’s plantation and  got there just in time to sing Happy Birthday to Uncle Brightfire. It was dawn soon after we’d tasted the cake, and we hastened to my parents’ palace to rest there until brunch, which was served a little before noon.

Mum scolded Uncle Gentlerain for not having gone to see his wife yet, and said he had no excuse not to now that I was a free agent again. We three kids were very curious about Mabel. We thought there had to be something terribly unattractive about her, the way Uncle Gen had responded to Miss Aislene's assault. We also feared she might be badtempered and cross with Uncle Gen and might kick him out of their house for having disappeared for so long, so we asked him if we could tag along and see her and what would happen. Mum was not pleased with that.

“You want to see Mabel?” Mum snapped at us. She turned round and poked her fan – I think I have forgotten to say that in reality this is her magic wand, which she hides under that shape – at a mirror behind her. “There you have her!”

A room that looked like a library appeared in the mirror and there was a lady in blue sitting at a desk, writing.

“Scribble, scribble, scribble like Mr. Gibbon,” said Mum. “That’s all that is wrong with her.”

The scribbling lady looked up as if she sensed she was being watched. She removed a pair of spectacles, and rubbed her nose  between her eyes with her free hand. She had the loveliest, dark eyes I had ever seen. I also began to notice how pretty her nose was, and how sensually her thick,  raven black hair, with its blue reflections,  was messily pinned. I must add that her skin was white as snow and her lips ruby red.

“She’s pretty!” exclaimed my sisters in unison. Actually, the word for Mabel is gorgeous.

“Don’t bother going to meet her,” said Mum. “She has nothing to say to anyone who doesn’t know who the Ass Cock  is.”

“Mum!” we cried. “We’re shocked!”

“Asinius Gallus,” explained Uncle Gen, “a Roman historian.”

“I know who that is,” I said. “He married Tiberius’ wife.”

“She can speak to him,” Uncle Gen said to Mum.

So I got to go with Uncle Gen to his house after brunch, though Mum had not refrained from accusing Gen of hiding behind a child.

It was to Uncle Gen’s ideal home we went to see Mabel, because he said it wouldn’t be his ideal home if she weren’t there. They were so young when they married, that they didn’t get two ideal houses, but one single home ideal for both. We got on a boat to reach this place, because it was right next to one of the four ports on Apple Island. From our litle sailboat I saw a white, classical building that looked more like a temple than a home. It was on a promontory, and had nothing on either side but the ocean below.  But it had lovely, wild gardens that ended in a wood of pinetrees behind it. 

“Your mother is very grateful to Mabel. She used to dislike her for having become involved with me when we were seven. Your mother and your grandmother were convinced Cybela, that is Mabel’s mum, placed the little girls we found right were we would find them. It wasn’t like that, but it could have been, so happy was their grandmother about them. Not placed, no, but she might have wished them there. Well, your mum stopped disliking Mabel when I grew to be twenty and the Demon Bride laid her eyes on me and, well, suddenly Mabel didn’t seem that bad a sister-in-law after all.” 

When we got to the entrance to the temple, that is the house, Uncle Gen  took a deep breath and said, “Alright, time to see if we get booted out of here or not.”

We crossed room after room, all their walls lined with books, all with huge shell-shaped windows on either side, letting sunlight in  and giving to galleries that gave to the sea. And then we got to the room we had seen in the mirror and there was Mabel scribbling with a feather and I noticed her fingers were stained blue with a little ink, which I found endearing, and that she was as gorgeous as I had thought she was when I saw her reflection.

“Ahem!” Uncle Gen coughed.  Mabel looked up and removed her glasses and there were those black eyes, like ripe blueberries,  now lingering upon us.

“Is it already noon?” she asked, yawning a little.

“No,” said Uncle Gen. “It´s almost time for high tea. Since when haven’t you had anything to eat, Mabel?” He pointed at a dish with a stiff and mouldy sandwich on it. “What a disaster!” he murmurred.

“I have no idea,” she said. “Maybe last night. Come over here, Gen, I have something curious to show you. No, it can wait. You’re with someone, who is that with you?”

“My nephew, who knows who Asinius Gallus is,” said my uncle.

“For someone his age, I would say Titus Livy would be a better read,” said Mabel. “Is there someone to make tea for us?”

“There is me, right here,” said Uncle Gen.

“Well, what are you waiting for, Gen? Your uncle brews a mean tea,” Mabel smiled at me, “but one of you should drop by the kitchen and see if Granny Milksops has made anything nice for us to have with it.”

We had a lovely tea that afternoon. Mysteriously brewed by Uncle Gen and served by Granny Margery Milksops’ favorite granddaughter. I got to meet the famous Granny herself, when she came to see if Mabel and her company approved of her rhubarb tarts and other delicious treats and frightened us all by almost dying of a heart attack when she saw Uncle Gen was back. And I didn’t find Mabel boring at all. In fact, I promised to come every Saturday and spend the day working there with my aunt and uncle.

“You’re back, aren’t you, Uncle Gen?” I whispered when he took me  back to my parents’ palace later that evening. “You’re not going anywhere but back home now that you’ve dropped me off, are you? I don’t think you could have chosen a nicer wife.”

“What are three hundred years to a historian?” he said. “How can I have doubted Mabel would wait for me?”

And that is how we both became who we used to be again.