216. The Green Train

 

216. The Green Train

I began my search for Elysio by consulting Cobweb. I found her and her team of cleaners having their office party. They were all very merry and received me in a very friendly manner, insisting on my joining them and doing their best to stuff me with tacos and margaritas, which was what they were enoying that year, Mexican food. They were doing sing alongs with mariachis hired for the occasion and they did not listen to anything I tried to say until the mariachis had forced me to sing El Rey. I don’t know why, because I am no exceptional singer and not the type of person the song is about, being quite timid, but the crowd clapped and cheered like mad, yelling for encores and since they so approved my rendition I had to suppose they had really hit the tequila. It took me a while, but I was finally able to question all of those who had done the cleaning up at Grandpa’s. They had a lot of stories about how mean Botolph had been about  the debris that had fallen off the clouds into his garden, and how they had to pick this stuff up without stepping on the ground and had to avoid touching any of the plants with gloveless hands, but nobody had any news about Elysio. No one had seen anything that might resemble the corpse of a poor moth. That gave me hope, though I wasn’t sure where to look next. The idea of having to interrogate each and every one of those who had assisted to the party was discouraging. Cobweb, however, told me to consult Moth the first. Moth is not exactly a moth fairy in that she is not as small as her namesakes. She is our size, which is like that of average humans.They call her Moth because she is very showy and likes to live by night. But Cobweb said all those small fairies knew Moth well and regarded her as one of their tribe. Perhaps the moths themselves had news of Elysio.

I found Moth in the place I least expected her to be. She wasn’t in her Moon palace,  an original ideal home made of bricks covered with a sheet of silver polished to an extraordinary whiteness and that changes shape mirroring the Lady Moon herself. It even becomes invisible on moonless nights. And Moth wasn’t at the salon of the designer Lukinotakis, where she works, either. She was at Wildgale and Mathilde’s house, teaching Gretel and Botolpha how to fence. At first, I didn’t recognize her in her white fencing outfit, with the stainless steel mesh mask on. This had been her gift to the girls, fencing uniforms and free fencing lessons.

“Moth!” I exclaimed. “I had no idea you knew how to fence!”

“I’m the fairy world champion,” she said. “Thanks to Shakespeare. You know how in his play he made me a boy so that the male actor that played  me back then could be comfortable in the role and how Will said I was good with a sword? Well, I thought, why not? And I learned how to fence. And like I just said, I’ve gotten to be the fairy world championess.”

“Congratulations!” I said.

Moth put me in touch with Saturnina, Empress of the Moths, who dwells in a huge tree rife with cocoons. This tiny imperial fairy, all wrapped in gauze and silk and with stupenduous gray and black wings,  was  much surprised to hear I was actually bothering to search for a tiny moth fairy, for she thought these kind of fairies didn’t matter much to larger types. I told her about Lucerna and how close and attached she was to Elysio and, though the empress had no idea who Elysio was, she was moved. She summoned and  consulted the Black Witch Moth, Melaniona, who was her advisor in obscure matters. The witch appeared all wrapped in silk and gauze too, but with wings of blue and violet and black shades.  Melaniona said she knew who Elysio was,  but that it was my Uncle Gen I had to speak with about this matter. The witch moth also said I would find my uncle at my grandfather’s place, and so I thanked her and the Empress and went to see if I could find Uncle Gen where it had been said he would be, and he was  there and I did find him.

“This gnome will be the death of me!” muttered Uncle Gen. “Look what he now has here.”

We were standing on the porch with Corinthian columns that go all around Grandpa’s oval palace and when I looked at the spot in the garden Uncle Gen was pointing at I saw something greener than the grass and with huge glittering diamond shaped patterns  on it.  And that green thing looked like an enormous serpent.

“Oh, no!” I said. “Does Botolph mean to have trespassers strangled and swallowed by that monster?”

Uncle Gen shook his head.

“I wouldn’t put it past him,” he said dryly, “if left to his own devices. But that’s why I am here. That there is a train, Arley. Your grandmother Divi nagged your grandfather Aetty about the poisoned garden and he has persuaded the gnome to allow a toy train to parade along the gardens on special occasions. Visitors can board it and enjoy viewing the unequalled beauty of these gardens without stepping on anything or touching a thing. Papa thinks even children will find the gardens so impressive that they won’t want to wreck them by stepping into them. When I tried to speak to Papa today about the disaster that could have occurred if we’d all fallen off the clouds into the toxic gardens, he was so pleased with himself for having had this train idea that there was no getting him to consider any other. Such as booting Botolph.”

“Is this new idea good or  bad?” I asked.

Uncle Gen shrugged.

“Look at me, but touch me not. What is this place? A museum or a home? I used to call it home.”

A story goes that Uncle Gen, when he was almost seven, had flatly told his father that it was either the gnome or himself, and that AEternus had chosen Botolph. With the excuse, all must be said, that Gentlerain would be very welcome at many other places. Not so the gnome, who would have nowhere to go . Shortly after, Gen made good his threat. He married and moved to his ideal home with Mabel. But he was at grandfather’s daily because no one there could do a thing without him.

I told Uncle Gen why I needed to see him and he nodded.

“I’ve spoken with the Black Witch Moth myself,” he said. “It was the first thing I did when I heard Elysio was missing. And yes, we´ve found him. But the matter is a little delicate. It involves your supposed brother Epon.”

Everything that has to do with my brother Epon is a delicate matter. So delicate that it is only by a thin chance that I know he exists. Hardly anyone has heard he does. Most of my  brothers and sisters have never heard of him.  And it is rumored that neither has my mother.

“Look,” said my uncle. “I´m going to ask you to do me a favor. It has to do with the human lady’s kids, the once Sherbananians that are now living with the fauns up in the mountains. Those people have very little. They like it that way. They insist that they need very little, but it is gift-giving time and I am sure those children will appreciate some presents. I have a sack full of toys for them, and a basket full of the kind of food they can’t get up there in the mountains. There may be a lot to be said in favor of  the pastoral life. However, I think the country is alright for a pleasant weekend,  when the weather is sunny and bright, but to stay there  for keeps, with the cows and the sheeps, is a much overrrated delight. I could have quoted Hesiod or Theocritus himself or any of his myriad followers, but an old 1920s song is closer to my personal opinion.”

I later looked up the song he had quoted and it was titled something like A Twelve O’clock Girl in a Nine O’clock Town.

Uncle Gen pointed at a sack and a basket that appeared at his feet. They seemed to be totally empty. But I knew they were choke full of stuff for Jane’s kids and for Eleutherium and his siblings. They looked and felt empty so I could carry them more easily.

 “Giving this out won’t take much of your time,” said Uncle Gen. “And the Thorn Brothers will take you to Epon. They know where he dwells. And I will owe you two favors, if you deal with these two affairs for me. Now, listen carefully, Arley. On no account must Alpin accompany you on this trip. He is no longer a helpful, though pixilated,  young man, nor a jinxed apple who can be made to reason. The Sherbananians have no idea what Alpin is truly like. They think he is their national hero. Let´s leave it that way.  And I don’t want him to even remember they ever exisd. We don’t need to become involved in affairs of that disagreeable sort ever again. And then, I would rather Alpin never gets to hear about Epon. Epon wouldn’t like that. He values his privacy. And now I have to make sure the green paint that murder-attempting gnome has used to change the colour of the outside and the inside of the train has no arsenic in it. You see, the train was  blazing red when it got here yesterday.”