Alpin had pretended to be meek and civilized
while we were with Don Caralampio. And he was relatively quiet during our ride
to Toledo, only speaking out twice. First, as I said before, to ask why we were
rushing, and next to demand having an appetizer after an hour of riding.
Fortunately, he was content to be fed this appetizer by his fridge and Frostina
gave him tons of fruit and bread and cheese she had available. But before he
began to eat, he warned us that when we reached Toledo he would want to taste local
food. He drew out his map and list of specialities and said he would have for
lunch carcamusa and Toledan rice. And dessert would be marzipan from Peces,
because he had read it was the best. While Alpin ate his appetizer, I was
giving all this some thought, trying to find a way to get hold of this food he
required without being violently kicked out of wherever we stopped to order it.
Of course, we would have to avoid all mortal restaurants. The problem was not
what we would have to pay for the food. In fairy pockets there always jingles
an endless supply of fairy gold. It was that the amount we would order was
bound to frighten the natives into stoning us. I was finding no solution when
Frostina drew me aside and gave me one. The best ever.
“Send Vinny and his nephew ahead on their
fireflies while we are nearing Toledo. Let them order tiny rations of these
three specialities for themselves from one or another of the fay eating houses.
When they are back, place these tiny rations within me and I will multiply them
until we are all sated.”
“You can do that?” I said, stunned with
surprise. “I thought Finbar made you so you could produce an endless supply of
five meals, different each day of the week. I thought the menus were fixed, and
you could produce nothing aside from what you were programmed to.”
“Exactly,” said Frostina. “That’s how it is.
But I have a secret weapon. Secret because I have to return it when we are on
our way back home. Alpin must not know
what I have or he will want to keep it.”
“May I know?”
“Don Caralampio has given me a very small
relic of San Caralampio. When this saint was martyred and his body torn in
pieces, the faithful retrieved all they could of it. It went to different temples.The
saint asked the Almighty for a favour. No one was to go hungry wherever a
relict of his was venerated. No one includes Alpin.”
“You
have one and this is going to work?”
“Don Caralampio says no one includes Alpin.
So, yes.”
And yes, it was yes. And I hit bliss to have
this problem off my shoulders. All we had to do was show Alpin the food before
he could scream he wanted to go to this or that restaurant in particular, and
he couldn’t resist stuffing himself picnicing right there on the road where we
offered him the food he desired. Thus, he had no contact with the
restaurateurs, fay or mortal. I am never going to be able to thank Don
Caralampio enough.
“Where can I find faux partridges?” asked
Alpin. “I want those for dinner.”
Vinny and Dolphus found everything he wanted.
He had lunch as ordered the minute we stepped into the province of Toledo and
then we wandered about admiring the river and its meanders and the sights to be
seen from high up, and Alpin had icecream and cakes for tea and faux partridges
and marzipan with meringue on it for dinner when it got dark, and when he was
done, I knocked on the door of Ephraim Ruiz of Toledo. It was a little late,
but I had thought it prudent to feed Alpin dinner before visiting.
Ephraim Ruiz of Toledo is the uncle of my
friend Ariel, who is also a nephew of Mary the Prophetess. Mary, who taught my
sisters Heather and Thistle alchemy, is,
as I have said before, a great friend of my mother’s, as Ariel is a great
friend of mine. When Ariel, a human child of great promise, died at the
untimely age of nine, his ghost fell under the care of Mary, who brought him to
our home so he could play with me and teach me Hebrew. I was then five, but fay
kids are sharp at five, and Ariel was kind enough to me for an older kid and we
made friends. All my brothers and sisters can speak several languages, all of
us speak Latin, most also understand Greek, and aside from these, we have also
been taught two or three other supposedly dead or agonizing languages we have
chosen to delve in. When Ari’s grandparents died a year and a half later,
mostly because they were so upset about Ari’s demise, Ariel moved away to haunt
the same spots they did. But we kept in touch, writing each other letters, and
communicating on special occasions through our crystal balls. When I called Ari
to tell him why I had disappeared for years, and all about how depressed I had
been, so much that he hadn’t heard from me, we resumed communication. When he
heard I was going to do the Way, he told me to get in touch with his aunt, for
she might want me to do her a favour. Mary asked me to please take a box filled
with papers to her relative Ephraim in Toledo. She assured me its contents
would do no harm and said I could open the box and read the papers whenever I chose
to. I said there was no need for that, since I had to cross no border and there
is no such thing as customs officers in our world. I could and did trust her
fully. She also gave me a small leather purse with eighteen old coins to do a good
deed with when I got to the end of the world.
Though I told Ephraim we had already had
dinner, he said he had been expecting us and he made us have dinner again. It
was obvious someone had warned him about Alpin, seeing the amount of food he
had prepared for us. Alpin ate so much
that he excused himself and went off to bed as soon as he was done. I stayed to
chat a while with Ephraim. Before I could give him Mary’s box, he said, “I want to show you something in case you
have a problem on the way to the end of the world or back.”
Ephraim took me to a room where he opened a
closet and raised a trap door within that. We descended a stone staircase with
a very sturdy iron railing, opened a double door and got to a most wondrous
place. This was a well illuminated underground grotto, a chamber with seashells of different kinds forming spectacular symbols on its walls and ceiling. We crossed two
other such chambers that also had walls and ceilings covered with shells of different kinds. Then we got to a wide tunnel that was equally illuminated and he said it went straight all the way to the
end of the world, to the ocean at Finisterre.
“If you have no problem on your way to the
end of the world, you might want to use this route on your way back, because it
will be quicker. I will give you a map with the spots where you can descend
into the tunnel.”
I briefly studied the patterns the shells
made on the walls and easily saw that the designs in the first building were
symbols of planets and stars and those in the second chamber were the symbols
used in alchemy, but those in the third chamber were unknown to me. The patterns
on the walls of the tunnel, however, I was again able to read. “On these walls
are sigils. These hold… a list of the names of angels?” I asked, for I had
recognized a few.
Ephraim nodded.
“Is the list complete? I mean, are the names of all the angels in this tunnel?”
“No, because every time someone does a good
deed an angel is born. I can’t keep up with that. And they wouldn’t fit here,
long as the tunnel is. This is a list of angels I am acquainted with.”
“I’m impressed and I have to say so,” I said.
We retuned to Ephraim’s house and he gave me
the map he had spoken of and I gave him the box Mary had given me for him.
“Did she give you anything else?”
“She gave me eighteen coins to do a good deed
with when I reach the end of the the world.”
“Then I will give you seventeen sets of
eighteen coins so you will have eighteen sets of eighteen coins to do good
with, if you don’t mind taking the trouble to. Is it too large an order?”
I said that this was no trouble at all and I
would be happy to be useful and he warned me to be careful if I used them to
help mortals, which would probably be the case.
“These are old coins. Make sure whoever
receives them understands they are all there are, or they might dig up the spot
you are standing on to search for more.”
I got up long before dawn the next morning
and went to see Frostina so she and I could prepare breakfast for Alpin before
Ephraim’s cook had to do it. When the others rose, all was set and ready for
all of us.
“There was no need for this,” said Ephraim,
but he seemed pleased. The cook certainly was. She added bagels and latkes and
cholent and challah to our meal and incredibly well pickled olives, but looked
a lot happier than she had the evening before.
After we had breakfasted, helped the cook to
clean up and said goodbye to our host, we again hit the road, off on the beautiful Way.
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