237. Dancingand Dealing in the Downright Dark
It was going well. Well, for something a bit sinister, it was. Michael and I, shrunken to insect size, were lurking among yellow horned poppies and the lavender and yarrow that grew right next to the Murkee’s monticle. In the dark, the lovely colours of these plants were lost, but the scent of honey that floated in the evening air from the butterfly bushes was almost overpowering. The smaller we make ourselves, the larger everything that surrounds us grows, including the odours, so I fervently prayed I wouldn’t sneeze. We waited patiently and most quietly until the dark went much darker. The lanterns that lit Uncle Gen and Aunt Mabel’s home went out, and so did those of their neighbours. When there were no lights of any kind left outside, or to be seen glowing from inside, we knew it was twelve o´clock in a lightless night. Even the glow worms had turned off their lovely little shimmer.
Michael and I nodded at each other and turned our eyes quickly to the mound. And suddenly there it was, the huge face of the Murkee, yawining all over his monticle. I made ready to spring. And he sprang out of his mound, to the top of it, small now. And I sprang in insect size onto him. And Michael began playing his violin, softly and sadly. And I grew to my own usual size before he could feel me and swat me flat. I grasped the Murkee’s wrist before he could tell what was happening, and heard his feet already dancing in the dark, I could hear them tapping whenever they lande don the ground and that is when things went wrong. Alpin appeared out of nowhere and slapped my hand, making me almost lose hold of the Murkee, yelling, “Why are you always doing something absurd instead of tending to me?”
And things went really wrong because the Murkee grabbed hold of Alpin and began to dance with him. Involuntarily, of course, but effortlessly, Alpin danced too.
“What is the meaning of this?” yelled Alpin as the Murkee dragged him up and down the mound, twirling and leaping in slow motion, motion as slow as Michael’s music. Michael, fortunately, didn’t stop playing for a second as I had feared he might at the sound of his cousin’s voice. “Arley, I mustn’t stop playing,” he called out. “Will you be alright?”
“Yes!” I shouted back. “Keep playing. I’m going to do what I can. Despite the disturbbance.”
“WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS?” blasted Alpin,as loud as he could and trying to step on the Murkee’s nimble feet. “LET GO OF ME, BEGRIMED NITWIT!
“Yes!” shouted the Murkee, tightening his hold on Alpin as I did mine on him. “What is the meaning of this?”
“Hush, Alpin, and I’ll explain this to the Murkee!” I cried.
“What? Why the Murkee? What about me? Why not to me?”
And he began slapping at the hand I held the Murkee’s wrist with, until the Murkee himself, tired of getting hit along with me because he was in the way, shouted he would strangle Alpin with his long beard unless he stopped striking us. He stopped trying to scratch me off and grasped Alpin with both hands now.
“Pas de trois!” yelled the Murkee, and Michael decided to humor him and began to play the Minkus Pas de Trois. And there we were, dancing all three. I wasn’t compelled to, but it was easier to dance along that to be dragged along.
“Alpin, be sure we wouldn’t be dancing here, if this weren’t serious business I am about,” I tried to explain, speaking first to the unchangedling to secure his silence.
“Serious?” said Alpin. “Seriously, Arley, how can this be serious?”
I blurted out what I hoped would silence him, but he began to recriminate me as he usually does.
“When I say I am spending the week at my brother-in-law’s and you are free to go off where you please, you must not take me seriously, Arley. You know very well my sister will kick me out of her house the minute she gets the chance. So you should be lurking in the bushes of her garden waiting for me to need you instead of lurking near a mound so you can dance with the old fellow from it. And having sneaked off mysteriously too. Provoking my justified curiosity.”
I asked him to trust me on this one and to listen to what I had to say to the lord of the mound if he needed further explanations.
“The sooner you hush, the sooner this will be over,” I said.
“I WANT THIS TO BE OVER NOW!” was Alpin’s reply.
“Paquita!” hollered the Murkee.
“I’m not sure I know that one well enough,” said Michael. But he tried his best to play something like the Paquita Pas de Trois.
“Honestly, Alpin, shut up and this will soon be over!”
“I’m not letting this Alpin go until you release me,” said the Murkee.
“I imagined so,” I replied.
And I began to tell the Murkee why I was clinging to his wrist. And just as I thought would happen, Alpin wanted the gift of shaking gold for himself.
“What do you want that for, Alpin? Gold coins always jingle in our pockets!”
“No way!” said the Murkee. “I´m not giving him gold!”
“You needn’t give it to him,” I said. “I only want it for the baby cook that lives in that house to the left of your mound. You may have seen her fluttering about. Which reminds me, you must know who Pearl and Granny Milksops are.”
“Of course I do,” said the Murkee. “We’re not on speaking terms. Mostly because they have never spoken to me.”
“Mostly because they probably have never seen you,” I said, “since you keep to yourself in your mound. Look, this is vital, lord of the mound, Pearl’s daughter Candle is missing. Tell me what you know about this.”
“´Tis king of the hill I am,” said the Murkee. “And all I will say, doing them as don’t know me a favour, is ask the Pestle.”
Alpin was quiet. He was now very interested in all that was going on. And calculating how he could manage to get a gift for himself.
“The pestle?”
“The Mortar!”
“You want the cooks to ask their mortars?”
I was beginning to fear the worst.
“I said I wouldn’t say more and I won’t. Now let me go.”
“I’m telling you in earnest I can’t do that until you grant little Melissa the gift of shaking gold,” I insisted.
“The Nutcracker!” yelled the Murkee.
“What?” I said. “First a pestle, then a mortar, and now a nutcracker?”
The Murkee made no reply. But he didn’t have to. Michael began to play the Pas de Trois from The Nutcracker and I realized it was Michael he had spoken to last.
There was no way of making the old man say more about Candle, and I decided I had no choice but to twist his arm to get him to promise to grant Melissa the gift she needed. I felt awful having to do that, and Alpin certainly didn’t make me feel any better.
“That’s right, Arley,” he hollered. “Strong arm the stubborn old bodach . Make him give it to me too.”
I was afraid of breaking the skinny, twiglike arm I was twisting, so I went as carefully as I could about it. Luckily I am good at inventing threats, so I started hissing, “If I’m doing this, you can be sure I am desperate! And will stop at nothing! I am a prince of this place, and I will get you kicked out of your mound and evicted from the island, no matter how long you’ve lived here.”
“Ah,” said the Murkee, “I’ll do it. I grant the child the gift of shaking gold.”
I knew he could be lying to me. So I kept a tight hold on him and told him I wouldn’t let go until I was sure he had kept his word.
And our dancing went on for hours, with the Murkee never letting go of Alpin and I never letting go of him.
“Swallowtail!” yelled the Murkee at Michael, determined to shake us off him with a jig. Lord, how the fellow could dance!
“Kesh!” yelled the Murkee, and after that, the toughest, “Tam Lin!”
It was horror after horror from then on, with the Murkee yelling for Michael to play faster and faster and Alpin screaming for gold and swearing we would wear him out before he did us. I don’t know how the neighbours didn’t come out to murder us, except stepping outside is not the wise thing to do on moonless nights, specially if you are hearing weird music plus yells and screams. I knew of one who would step out, though. “If he’s home, he’s out here!” I said, thinking of Uncle Gen and adding his possible interference to my fears.
And then when I knew dawn was about to break, I asked the Murkee for Melissa’s gift once more.
And he yelled back, “It’s hers!”
“Why are you taking his requests?” oblivious to our deal, Alpin shouted at Michael, suddenly visible among the rosemary. “My own fool of a cousin, whose side are you on? You’re making it difficult for us!”
“OW!” hollered the Murkee as a ray of sunlight hit his back.
“Done!” shouted Michael, and he stopped playing with a gasp of relief.
And I let go of the Murkee and he fled into the mound.
Fortuntely or unfortunately, he took Alpin with him.
“Oh, no!” I whispered to Michael. “I forgot to ask him to abstain from revenge!”
“Never ye mind,” said the Murkee’s huge face appearing on the mound. “I’m willing to deal with ye.”
Michael showed him first the three feathers and the hat, and the old man said he fancied them, and that for them he would exact no revenge on us. We were about to breathe when he reminded us there was the matter of Alpin.
“Do ye want him back?” he asked doubtfully.
Michael and I exchanged a look.
“So ye do not,” sighed the Murkee. “I can’t say I blame ye. Well, he's no bad dancer. I might find a use for him.”
“What do you want for him?” I asked, before I remembered the Murkee mustn't be asked what he wants. Fortunately for us, however, the old man was not interested in bargaining at the moment.
“Yer not to give me anything. I want ye to take a thing from me.”
“Your words bode no good,” I said. “What would you give us? Or have we to fight you for it?”
“No, no more contests. I've been dancing all night and have no wish to wrestle. I’ve a lad on me hands I’ve no space for. Nor has his ma, nor no other. I’ll return yer nuisance to ye if ye free me o’ mine.”
“Who is he and where do we have to fetch him?” I asked.
And the Murkee opened his mouth wide, lifting the mound from the earth and spat out of his mouth a dusty, grimy boy that had to be less than seven though he was as tall as a tall ten. If he’d been at least seven and so unwanted, he would be on his own.
“Do you have Candle in there?” I yelled immediately. “Because I’m going in! I’ll dig up your mound till I find the entrance if you don’t return her, and-”
“Hush ye! This lad is me own son, but we’re not wanting him no longer. He’s big for his age and takes up too much space. He needs to find his own mound. But he can’t do that in this island, for yer mother won’t want it, and yer uncle won’t allow it, the lad being new, and not an old inhabitant here. But, if ye are a prince of the place as ye say ye are, and ye were to take him in, yer bossy kinfolks might look another way.”
No comments:
Post a Comment