226. Dealing With Surprises

 

226. Dealing With Surprises

“Go to the garden before the rising of the moon,” said Grandpa. “And take these amulets with you.”

He gave me a keychain with seven charms hanging from it, five stones, one of which was a bezoar, and a charred bone and a spine from a pufferfish.

“These will protect you from the seven poisons Botolph uses to make the garden unvisitable. Now this is very important. Don’t begin to negotiate with the gnome before he says what he wants. You let him speak and listen to him first. If what he wants is reasonable, then let him have it.”

I had lunch with Grandpa and it was well past noon when I got to the garden. About four o´clock in the afternoon, I would say. I glanced up at the sun and it seemed to be saying the same thing. I flew over the park to see if I could spot Botolph, but he was nowhere to be seen. So I decided to try to find him at the gardener’s house. That, I supposed, was where he lived. Maybe he was taking a nap or something.

 I stood before the house’s front door and called for Botolph. He didn’t show. The door was open and I stepped inside. I expected to find a mess of a place, full of dirt and soil and broken flower pots and bags of seeds and more personal debris, like rotting food and dirty dishes. But no. The place was spotless. And everything was in what had to be its place. There was not much furniture or much of anything, just a table, four chairs, a bed, a cupboard and an open wardrobe. The wardrobe was empty, and next to it were four serpent or crocodile skin suitcases. There was a chasetime calendar hanging on the inner side of one of the wardrobe’s doors and the date of the day had a circle round it. A chasetime calendar is one that renews itself every month and every year. If you have one of those, you don’t need to change your calendar every year. And with it, pressing certain buttons, you can see any date of any year in the past or the future. Botolph’s calendar had a circle round the date of the day we were living.

And then Botolph appeared shouting curses.

“I’m here to talk!” I tried to explain. “I mean no harm!”

“If you think you’re going to stop me from leaving, you are out of your mind. As soon as the moon rises, I will walk out the door and you’ll have seen the last of me, and I sincerely hope I will have seen the last of all you pests too.”

“You don’t even know me,” I said. “I’ve never molested you. But what do you mean when you say you are leaving?”

“I’m seeing a handkerchief I forgot to pack in the wardrobe. Will you hand it to me?” he said, suddenly changing his tune.

The wardrobe, wooden and very large, was behind me, I turned around and saw the hanky and before I could pick it up, I got shoved into the wardrobe and Botolph banged the door and locked me in there.

“What is the meaning of this?” I cried. “Open this minute!”

I sure tried, but there was no getting out of the wardrobe. It must have had more fastening spells on it than there are listed and gathered in the Book of Knots. And I couldn’t call for help because my crystal ball was in my backpack and I had left my backpack on the floor outside.

“The meaning of this is that you are not going to stop me from leaving. I don’t know how many moons I have been here, but before that ***** AEternus stole my memories of the past, I marked the date I would be free to leave on that chasetime calendar. And today is the day I am walking out of here. As soon as the moon rises.”

“But where are you going?” I asked

“Snake Island. Queimada Grande. In Brazil. But don’t you dare come chasing after me. Because there is nothing you can do to make me stay. I’m done working here.”

“In the first place, I can’t chase anybody anywhere because I am locked up in a wardrobe. And in the second place, I came here to ask you to leave.”

“I don’t care what you came here for. But you won’t be able to get out of that wardrobe till the sun rises tomorrow. I’ll be beyond the mortal barrier by then.”

“What? Would you at least tell me what all this is about? What made you decide to leave? Was it the trumpet or have I missed something?”

“I might as well tell you, since I have the time for it. And since it will go to prove what a *** of a ***** your leader is. Always supposing you take my word for it.”

“My leader? You mean my grandfather? AEternus?”

“Him. I’m going to sit here beside the wardrobe and wait till the moon rises. But I can’t tell you all I know, only the parts I remember. It’s up to you to believe me or not.”

I heard him draw a chair up. He probably sat on it and then he began explaining.

“Many, many moons ago, stupendous AEternus fell into one of my traps. I can’t tell you how or why or which trap. He’s erased that from my mind because it was too embarassing for him to have me know this. It would make him look ridiculous to have been trapped by someone like me. But he did fall, you’d better believe me. He couldn’t break free, just like you can’t break out of the wardrobe. I had him in my claws, and then he suggested we play for his freedom. So we made a complicated pact stipulating what each of us could win or lose.  And then we played at the rock-paper-scissors game.”

“My grandfather played rock-paper-scissors for his freedom?”

“I loved that game. I always formed a rock when I played. I loved rocks. But your grandfather always formed paper.”

I didn’t bother to tell the gnome you aren’t likely to win this game if you always form the same shape and your opponent knows that. Which is what I was guessing had happened.

“We played three times. Your grandfather won all three. I had promised him first his freedom, next, to work for him in his garden for a fixed number of moons, and last, to let him erase from my memory anything that might embarass him and make him look ridiculous in the eyes of his people. I know I made a fool of him, but I can’t rememer how, and I can’t prove it. It’s his word against mine. So it’s no use telling anyone.”

“I believe you,” I said. “This explains a lot of things.”

“When I began to work in his garden, just as I had promised, I ran foul of his sons. They wouldn’t let me do my work the way it had to be done. So I decided to poison them.”

“That should have gotten you out of here, yes.”

“But your father couldn’t kick me out of here because he would be breaking our pact,  and if he did that, my memories would return. The ones I had allowed him to fade away that would embarass him in front of his people.”

“What a story!” I said.

“So he forced me to stay here and continue working in the garden. This AEternus is your grandfather?”

“I know he is difficult,” I said very quickly. “I’ve had trouble with him myself.”

“Understatement,” said Botolph. “Then those little ******** are your uncles? One of them is your father?”

“None of them is my father, “ I was relieved to be able to say. “I am Titania’s son. I think she didn’t get along so badly with you. She says you let her have teaparties in your garden and put little vases with lovely flowers on the table.”

“Hmm,” said Botolph. “Good. Because I hate her brothers. All of them are hateful. The know-it-all rainy one, the blustering windy one, the one that seems to do nothing but sleep but manages to mess things up on the quiet,  the singing monster that grows teeming weeds everywhere about, and the cheeky little one. That little one, he wasn’t half a foot high yet and I would shout at him to not set a foot in my garden, and he would stick his tiny, stumbling foot up in the air and drop it inside the garden. `Out!’ I would yell at him, and he would shout `Out!´ back at me. Everything I yelled at him that lousy roly poly doll would squeak back like an echo. He’s done that all his life. Even now that he’s grown to manhood, he sasses me back.”

“I’m not like that,” I said. “I take after my mother. Would you please let me out? I really don’t want to retain you. I’m happy you are free to leave for Brazil and I wish you could have been so many, many moons ago.”

We spoke and spoke for a couple of hours or more but Botolph was too suspicious to let me out of the wardrobe.  And then he said the moon had risen, and he said goodbye and walked out the door. He did wish me luck before he left, and he assured me the wardrobe would open on its own the minute the sun rose.

Before midnight, I heard it rain. I guessed that was Uncle Gentlerain, and I called out to him, but the trumpet was sounding all the while and he probaly had the earplugs on and couldn’t hear me. And then, way past midnight, I heard a deep voice whisper, “Arley, are you in that wardrobe?”

“Grandpa? Grandpa!” I cried.

“Yes, it´s me. How are you doing?”

“Fine, considering I’ve been locked up in a wardrobe for hours.”

“Are you experiencing the loneliness of leadership?”

“Am I experiencing what? Get me out of here, Grandpa. I haven’t done anything but what you asked me to do.”

I was beginning to think Botolph hadn’t really left and all that had happened was some machination of Grandpa’s to prove something important to him. Part of the war, I feared.

“The loneliness of leadership,” said Grandpa. “I suffer that.”

“I’m not leading anyone or anything, Grandpa. If you think I have been conspiring against you, and leading your sons in revolt, you can think again, because I haven’t done anything of the kind. Ask Grandma. Are you paranoid? Fate forbid! Get me out of here!”

“Has the gnome told you why he was here all these moons?”

“He’s told me everything except  what he can’t remember. Which is the better part. So I don’t really know enough to harm you.Which I would never do in any case. Don’t keep me locked up in here forever. You know I won’t breathe a word of the little I know. Please, Grandpa!”

“What do you take me for? You’re misjuding me again! How can you think I had the gnome lock you up? Or that I would keep my favorite grandson in a wardrobe?”

“You sent me here, Grandpa. And you already knew Botolph was about to leave.”

“Listen very carefully, Arley. We have to learn to deal with the surprises life deals us. You won’t be in there for long. You’ll be out long before the sun shines. Your uncles are on their way here. They wanted to consult a plan they had with you, and Gentlerain looked for you in his crystal ball, hoping you would be awake and available for consultation, and he saw you were locked up in here. He thinks Botolph has kidnapped you and is rasing hell. Now the brothers think they’ve got him where they want him, because kidnapping is a serious crime. I’ve made myself invisible, but I don’t want to be heard speaking to you. When the boys get here and Brightfire blasts the lock, you must tell them you persuaded the gnome to leave, and that when he left, on your own way out, you bumped into the wardrobe and it sucked you in and it locked you up. Not the gnome. The gnome had already left. This was an accident. On no account must you say he left because he’d done his time here. Tell them you told him about a job opportunity in Snake Island and he got all excited and left to live a richer, fuller life there. Tell them he listened to you because you are the only person who has ever spoken to him nicely. But don’t tell them about our pact, or that I sent you here. Enjoy the glory of being the man of the moment. A better man than your uncles, a finer man than your grandfather! You, Arley, you are the hero who finally expelled the poisoner from the garden!”

“GRANDPA!” I yelled indignantly.

“Yours is the glory. And they say I don’t back my family.”

“GET ME OUT OF HERE!”

“Hush!”

And then I heard a rumbling noise, in the not so distant distance, like a pack of wolves approaching. And Epon’s trumpet began to blow and then suddenly stopped, a trill cut in half. And I heard sirens, but of the alarming, not of the melodious, kind. And I grabbed the calendar that was on the door and stuck it in my coat, so my uncles wouldn’t see the circle round the date of Botolph’s liberation.