188. The Matchmakers

 188. The Matchmakers

On the Monday after we visited Aunt Mabel and Uncle Gen’s refurbished home, I got up early to go to work. That is, to visit Alpin.

On my way there I strolled through Minced Forest and said hello to the Leafies and to Artemius, King of the Woods, promising him that I would do all I could to keep Alpin from destroying his realm.

When I got to the Dullahan home, Miss Aislene received me with open arms. I admit I was a little scared of being hugged by the ex Demon Bride, after seeing what had happened to Uncle Gen, but it was still a very pleasant feeling to know she appreciated me.

Unfortunately, Alpin didn’t. Whereas his mother said she loved me more than ever for having voluntarily offered to be Alpin’s friend, Alpin was of a different mind.

“¡You traitour, you!” he bellowed, casting at my head the bowl of wax fruit that had been his refuge for the past years.

Fortunatley, I caught the bowl before it could hit the floor and crack in pieces. The fruit, however, I was not able to save entirely, as it flew in all directions faster than I could,  and some of it got dented.

“Where were you all these years, false friend? Why weren’t you sitting here in the dining room watching over my sleep? You were under a spell. You had to serve me. And you went off, to ramble in the woods with outdated teddy bears. What kind of service is that?”

“I…I didn’t think your family would be comfortable with my being a permanent fixture in your… their dining room.”

“Yes, they would! They knew you were important to me, you snake in the grass! Were important! Because now I hate you!” spat Alpin.

“You no longer want me to be your friend? Because I said I would be for a whole year. But if this ends here, then I-”

“Of course I want you to be my friend! Don’t think you are going to get off so easily! What I’m saying is I no longer am yours. But if you think you are free to roam off again, you are much mistaken. Do your duty! And do it right this time! Don’t you dare abandon me, you vagrant!”

“I never did. I came when you called.”

“True. I had to call. Because you weren’t here waiting on me like you should have been.”

“You know what, Alpin? You were much nicer when you were an apple. And when you were a garbage-devouring young man too. You didn’t have much use for me in either guise, but you were much more agreeable than now that you are yourself again.”

 “What are you going to do to make up for not having gotten me changed back into myself all these years? You never even tried.”

“Nobody had any idea how that could be done.”

“You should have gone on a quest to find out, you son of Don Quijote. Look how easy it was  for your uncle to transform me. You should have gone to fetch him and brought him to me ages ago.”

“I didn’t even know he existed. Look, Alpin, I’m here to ask you if you want to have lunch with two of my sisters and two of my cousins.  We’re prepared for you. We have food enough. And it is being prepared by two wonderful cooks. A nice old lady called Granny Milksops and her favorite  granddaughter. They are both named Margery, but we call the younger one Pearl.”

“Hmm,” said Alpin. “This might bear looking into. Are you sure they are good cooks?”

I didn’t tell him he could see for himself. There were lots of reasons for not saying that. For example, he might remember he had an all-seeing eye and visualize Granny’s kitchen immediately. Alpin seemed to have forgotten what he had been like under the puca’s two spells. Under no account did I want him to remember the special ability his apple eye had had. Nor did I want him to crash into Granny’s kitchen and eat everything being prepared there even before it was cooked. 

  “What does it matter to you if they are?” I asked him. “You’re going to eat up everything anyway.”

“That I eat fast doesn’t mean that I don’t savour my food. I can tell the difference between what’s delicious and what is rot.”

“Well, then I think you will enjoy lunch.”

Alpin had a second gargantuan breakfast before he left his home. His mother didn’t want him to go anywhere where he could look as if she didn’t feed him. She had become conscious of this when Alpin was an easy-going garbage-devouring young man and all the neighbours congratulated  her on having such a useful son. I had some lemonade and sugar cookies Aislene made me take. They were good.  

After that, we strolled off through the forest to my parents’ palace, I with my fingers crossed, hoping I could avoid trouble between Alpin and Artemius. We didn’t stop at my home. We went directly to Apple Island through the door in the palace gardens that leads to the Cider Mills. I kept my fingers crossed there too, hoping Alpin would take no notice of the cider and the doughnuts and we could get to Thistle’s before he realized where we were.

Thistle had set a table up outside, in front of her terribly modern home with its oriental garden, full of statues of lions and dogs and ponds with goldfish. The table was big enough for twelve and loaded with trays of appetizers for a hundred. Alpin’s seat was at the head of the table. On the other end there were five normal-sized dishes each with assorted samples of the appetizers. These were for Heather and Thistle, and for our cousins, the Bluebell twins Belle (Belinda) and Bella (Arabella), and for me.

Through a window, we could see Granny Milksops and Pearl, working away in the kitchen. There were six other sprites cooperating in there too.

“I’m glad your Mum could spare Granny,” I said to the twins.

“Daddy spared her. Mum doesn’t care a fig what she eats,” said Belle. “She’s easy to poison.”

“You would think she has anosmia,” said Bella. “She doesn´t, does she, Belle?” asked Bella.

“Nah! Daddy said it was the least he could do to help you, Arley, to prepare Alpin’s first meal back out in the world, ” said Belle.  “No sacrifice for Daddy. He can cook real well himself,  so he doesn’t really need anyone to do it for him. Learned from the best, you know, at Grandpapá’s kitchen.”

To avoid confusion, which is easy when dealing with fay families where everyone is related to some degree whether they know this or not,  I will only add for the present that the grandparents Heather, Thistle and I share with the Bluebell twins are Grandmamá and Grandpapá, Uncle Gen’s and Mum’s parents. And that the twins’ other grandmother, Cybela, Mabel’s mum, who is the person that brought the twins up, is Grannykums and Grannykins and Grannypoo and more endearing granny names the twins like to call her. As for their other grandfather, Mabel’s dad, I only know that he casts peppercorns at books to keep them safe from bugs and aside from that have no idea who he is. One day I will ask.

“And from Finisterre Fishfin, for the vegetarian seafood. And what’s the other cookie’s name?” asked Bella.

“Arnaud does the French cusine and there’s Luigi for the pasta and other Italian dishes. Those have always been some of Grandpapá’s people.”

I had to interrupt.

“I suggest you start eating your appetizers. Alpin already is at his.”

“Is he really as terrible as they say?” asked the twins in unison.

“Worse,” sighed Heather.

“He hasn’t even said hi,” said Thistle with disgust.”Long time no see, Alpin!” she hollered at my friend. He raised a hand with a fork firmly clutched in it as a salute and went on eating.  

We sat down at our end of the table and the twins went on informing us about who was in the kitchen.

“Grandmummy Cy, that’s our mum’s mummy, sent us here with three professionals to help here too. They’ll be waiting at the table.”

“Now, down to business,” said Bella.

And she and Belle both smiled at each other. It was clear they were about to do what they most enjoyed.

“Why are none of you married?”

“Who would have us?” said Thistle, innocently.

I poked her in the ribs. It was clear she had no idea what the Bluebell twins were about.

“She’s said the magic words,” smiled Belle and Bella in unison.

“You’ve just hired them,” I hissed in a whisper.

“What?” said Thistle.

“Honeygirl, we’ll find a host of bees for your pollen, lovely  Thistle. You don’t seem to know what is out there, but we do.”

“Matchmakers,” I hissed again.

“Oh, no!” cried Thistle suddenly realizing what was happening. “No, not just yet. No way! NO!”

“They learned from their grandmother. She is the best matchmaker there is,” I explained, now out  loud.

“Where is the first course?” mumbled Alpin.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhh!” exclaimed  the twins in unison. “He’s done it! He’s eaten up all his food! How is this possible?”

Lorenzo, expert in vegetable roasts,  cocktail mistress Dilly and Faux Baked Ham Clovis, the  three sent here by Cybela, came out of the kitchen loaded with second servings of  appetizers for Alpin so we could get a chance to eat ours. Their eyes were as wide as saucers. In the fay world, people who work only do so out of compulsion, never out of necessity. These three, as well as Luigi and Arnaud, had come to see for themselves if the legend of the kid that wrecked The Poultice was true. To watch them observe Alpin and glance at each other was a spectacle in itself too.  

For a while we were quiet, munching. And when we were done, my sisters hastily explained to the twins that they preferred to wait and see if something came up spontaneously.

“Suit yourselves,” shrugged the twins, “but nothing spontaneous really comes up ever. In a few years, you’ll be knocking at our door asking us to find substitutes for  Messieurs Spontanés, of whom you will be sick. Don’t marry without consulting us. It isn’t easy to get rid of first spouses, barring murder, here in fairyland.”

This last was true. Except that murder just isn’t done. It is only that once people marry here, they are linked forever in everyone else´s  mind. One’s first spouse is the only partner everyone else ever remembers, a first wedding the only one that we really celebrate. This is because it is the happily-ever-after-wedding, the one everyone wishes will turn out right, and everyone hates to admit didn’t if it doesn’t. This doesn’t mean one can’t get fed up with one’s first spouse and try to find perfect happiness with someone else, or have occasional fun when and where and with whomever one pleases. This is not like the mortal world. Jealousy is more frowned upon than infidelity here. But a first spouse is like eternal. The only one that lives on in everybody else´s memory. You can live for a millenium with someone else, but when people ask you how your husband or wife is, they will still be referring to the first, even in the presence of your present millennial partner. Nobody cares beyond that or bothers to take notice,  except for scandals as great as those caused by Aislene, who  was a prowling peril to lives and not just to loves. And nobody really bothers to get a divorce here. Most  prefer to keep bickering from a distance with a first spouse.    

“Arley says he is taken, but we don’t see any future for him with that mad genius. No, no, no. Are you still infatuated with Redhood,  Arley?”

“Yes,” I lied. I had too much to handle just then to be thinking of looking for a wife. I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on that. It was simply not the right moment.

“Funny,” the twins looked at each other and shook their heads. Then they cast their eyes on Alpin. “What about him? Is he over seven?”

“I suppose one could say so. Technically, at least,” I spurted out before thinking twice. The mention of Rosina and the marrying thing had driven me off guard.

“Of course I am over seven!” shouted Alpin, pausing in his eating to recriminate me.  “I’ve even been like thrity for a time, haven’t I? That’s far more than  you have ever been, isn’t it, Arley? And I do want a wife. It’s better than having a treacherous friend.”

“No, no you don’t, you don’t want anything of the kind,” I said. “Don’t pay any attention to him, girls. We have problems enough as is. His mother would kill me if I let Alpin marry.”

“His mother,” my cousins  smiled at each other. Then they looked at me and said, “You know Arley, there’s this story…this legend, that’s how big it got… how the four pillars of aged society joined forces and freed our dad from the web of Alpin’s mum’s charms? Well, it´s all poppycrock!”

They began to laugh between themselves.

“Why are you laughing?” asked Alpin.

“We’re laughing because we mentioned poppies. We always laugh when we hear poppies mentioned. It’s a thing bluebell fairies have with poppy fairies. Never mind it. No concern of yours. We’re not laughing at your mother, poor thing. All she was trying to do was find herself a suitable partner. If she had come to us from the start, she would have been spared a lot of suffering. It wasn’t our ancient aunties that got her to surrender Daddy before he went irremediably daft. It was our Grannykums. Cybela. We know, because we’re like over three hundred years old. We were there. You ask your mum about Cybela, Alpin. She’ll tell you how our Grannykins found her the right husband. No resentment because your mum tried to steal her son-in-law. Grannydear is so understanding. Ernest. Yes, your daddy, the Dullahan. He is the man. Mr. Right himself. Neither of them has wandered off the straight, clear and narrow path once they fastened hands. Not ever.”

I could have said there was the incident with Uncle Gen on May Eve, but I suppose that was exactly what it was. Only an unfortunate incident and no gallant tryst.

The twins began to nod at each other and laugh and sing in unison, “A perfect match! If ever there was a perfect match, there it was, before everyone’s  eyes. But only our Grannypoo saw it!”

And then, when the girls and I got to the desserts…

“This boy,” whispered Dilly, the cocktail queen, as she served us some  piña coladas and Alexanders, “he treats food as if it were a bogey to fight off.”

“An enemy he has to destroy,” nodded Clovis.

“Food should be cherished and pampered first and then done the honour of being lovingly eaten and turned into one’s own sacred self,” sighed Lorenzo.

“¡É un bárbaro!” Finisterre Finfish suddenly roared, brandishing a griddle. The other three restaurateurs quickly carried him forcibly off before he could knock Alpin's brains out with it.

A word about Finisterre Finfish is necessary here. Centuries ago, he was one of those parafaries that do not seem to be mentally stable but have special abilities. In the mortal world, he was first known to have lived in a cave by the coast in Ireland, was friends with local pirates and a sworn enemy of invading foreigners, especially the English and the Turks. Due to problems with these objects of his loathing,  he moved to Galicia, where he perfected the art of turning algae into faux lobsters, oysters and clams that tasted better than the real articles. This talent of his attracted Grandpapá’s attention and Finisterre was allowed into Fairyland, where he found a haven in the grand old man’s fantastic kitchen.      

“Barbarian!” Finfish could be heard raving from the larder his colleagues had to lock him in. “¡Confounded bloody pirate of Barbary! When I catch you I'll fry you, you stinking shark fodder! ” That was the soundtrack during the rest of our meal.

“Thistle, have you anything we can give this poor man?” Heather whispered.

“No,” said Thistle. “You’re the only one that hoards tranquilizers. I fix these problems with a slap in the face.”

But it was Alpin Thistle eyed when she said that.

As for Alpin, he seemed to never have even noticed what was going on. But when he got home  he did tell his mother he’d had a passable meal somewhat marred by a cook who had gotten drunk.