239. The Pestles, Providers of Potions for Pilgarlics

 239. The Pestles, Providers of Potions for Pilgarlics

“Why, Alpin!” exclaimed Mrs. Dullahan, hearing me cry out in dismay. “What have you done to sweet Arley?”

“How can I know? He complains about everything!” replied her son.

“Please,” I cried, “everybody, please!”

Branna had left with her son and the purpose of bathing him to see what he looked like clean, but Miss Aislene and her son-in-law, as well as Michael and Alpin, were still present. All hushed to hear me out, and I explained that Candle’s disappearance was a secret, and had to be kept one. According to Grandpa, at least from uncles Wildfire and Gentlerain, and from practically everyone else possible to avoid this reaching their ears. When I had given them all the details I knew of the affair, Uncle Richearth laid a hand on my shoulder and said, “Arley, I can understand your wanting to keep this from my brothers, for Brightfire and Wildgale tend to be rash and violent, and Gen can be like a steamroller when he wants to get things done quick. But why didn’t you come to me? I do things differently. I’m civilized. Now, tell me. Have you any idea who has got my little niece?”

“I only know Aunt Pearl was gossiping with one of Aunt Mabel’s neighbours, and they went to the backyard of that person’s place and Candle stayed in the front yard, flittering around a mound occupied by the old Murkee your son used to live with.”

“So you have to question the elder Murkee immediately,” said Miss Aislene, who was looking very worried. I felt that at any moment she would begin to scream and faint and rise to screech to the world that Candle had to be found. This lady would have made a magnificent hired mourner if she’d had to work to earn a living.

“I already have questioned the Murkee,” I explained. “He said I had to talk to a pestle. And then he said I had to talk to a mortar. He wouldn’t say more, and I have no idea what he meant.”

Uncle Richearth and the ex Demon Bride exchanged a look. She was white as a sheet.

“Mortar and Pestle and Chickenbroth and Tireless Spinner will feed you yellow root and black rice and little white apples for dinner…” she recited.

“Dipped in red spider offal, and once a beginner, when you have eaten, you’ll get thinner and thinner. Craving for more, you’ll end up a binner,” finished Uncle Richearth.

“Oh, Arley, your uncle Gen has the worst neighbours,” lamented the Demon Bride with quivering voice. “Over the counter grey and black potion sellers, collectively known as the Pestles, with a stinky herbal shop for a front. Every potion the Pestles manufacture to solve a problem causes another. I’ve warned Gen to move away from these awful people, who know how to do dreadful harm, but he thinks he can control anything, and he stays to watch them.”

That the ex Demon Bride should be afraid of  someone boded no good.

 “Gen has a sort of monster reservation round Mabel’s lovely house,” explained Uncle Richearth. “He placed his house and his neighbours’ houses on that beach on purpose for the view. But not for the ocean view, that is for Mabel to enjoy. He keeps an eye on people who shouldn’t be living any longer in Apple island but who can’t be fairly expelled from it, because they were its first settlers and are not doing much obvious harm, though they have the potential to do it. Gen is sitting in this web thinking he is the spider and waiting for them to make a false move and tug at a thread. While they don’t, he will tolerate them, because he thinks it’s what’s just. But he spends his days being wary of them and that’s no way to live.”

“One day the Pestles will sell something to someone they shouldn’t and your uncle will go after them,” said Miss Aislene, sounding more and more worried. “These people are very wicked and very clever, and dangerous as two-edged knives. They could do your uncle great harm. He may be tougher than he looks, but these people know much evil, because they are very old, and relentless.”

“I’m going to retrieve Candle,” said Uncle Richearth. “You all wait here.”

But after much arguing with my uncle and Miss Aislene, Michael and I and even Alpin were allowed to accompany him.  

“Be very careful, son!” said his mother-in-law, and he answered, “Not to worry. We have to be, Mummy.”

We disappeared and reappeared at the beach before Uncle Gen’s house. Uncle Richearth glanced at the house, trying to make sure we weren’t in Uncle Gen’s sight. What was sure was that he wasn’t in ours.  Then Uncle Richearth looked towards the home of the potion sellers we had come to see.

“The Pestles are such old residents, so rooted here in the island, that when they were asked if they wanted to leave and take compensation or remain and accept an ideal home here they thought a humble hut would be a great improvement compared to the cave they lived in. They didn’t know there were better things.”

There was standing before us, indeed, a very primitive hut, made of stones piled one upon another and with a grassy roof. Before it, there was a rocky yard, unkempt and populated by nothing but weeds and stones. A little further off was the Murkee’s mound. There didn’t seem to be more to the house, but there was.

“Mortar named himself mortar because he was born on the day the mortar was invented,” explained Uncle Rich. “That should give you an idea how old he is."

"Pestle is called Pestle because nobody knows what her real name is, and she has been Mortar’s mate for millenniums. She is so old that no one dares to ask her when or where she was born.”

Uncle Rich pointed at the hut and said it wasn’t just a one room place. 

“The hut has an attempt at an attic, up there, where the window is, and the Pestles have a daughter in the attic. Her name is Tireless Spinner.”

He pointed at a smaller window that grazed the ground.

“The hut has a basement and the Pestles have a son in the basement. His name is Chickenbroth. The daughter doesn’t stray from the attic but the son visits the mortal world daily, where he frequents a slaughterhouse and buys chicken necks and chicken feet and brings them back to the island. We don’t kill animals here, and importing dead food is something  Gen wants to prohibit, but some of the older fairies impede this. It is possible that during these daily outings Chickenbroth also sells some of the Pestles’ sinister junk to foolish mortals, but we can’t do a thing about that. The sales take place in mortal territory.”

As we approached the hut a man who didn’t look as old as I had imagined he would came out of it to greet us.

“Prince Richearth!” he cried cheerfully.

“Master Mortar!” nodded Uncle Rich, smiling charmingly.

“To what do we owe this honour?”

Uncle Rich had never visited the Pestles without the company of Henbeddestyr Parry, who served as his advisor when he wanted to buy something from the herbsellers. Henny decided what Rich could acquire or had better not acquire from such people, for when Rich had dropped by this hut, it was to buy some of the concotions the Pestles sold. These were usually edible things they manufactured mostly from plants they grew in their backyard following ancient recipes and that it was difficult to find elsewhere because nobody wanted stinky or poisonous plants in their gardens. But the Pestles also prepared fertilizers and pesticides and dubious remedies for human and fairy illnesses.   

“I’m here to buy my niece back. How much do you want for her?”

I was quite surprised to hear Uncle Rich say that. Did he know for sure that someone had sold Candle to these people? Or that they had sold her to someone else?

“Ah,” said Mortar, his face now more serious. “It’s about the little girl who has disappeared. You had better talk to my wife about that.”

And he led us to the backyard. It was very pretty. It was the sort of place where the weather is always good, even during a snow storm. No hail ever touched it, and the rain that fell there was always of the right amount. No wind pushed the plants, bullying them till they gave and bent and fell to the ground. The plants there were many, growing in colourful little patches, making the place look like a fine patchwork quilt. There was not much of any one plant, but small quantities of all. However I knew these patches held endless material that grew back almost as soon as harvested. 

I identified the plants mentioned in the rhyme about the pestles. There was the yellow root plant, and a space for black rice, that turns partly purple when cooked. Both these plants are keys to the fairy world and when consumed by humans, allow them into it, or at least to have visions or dreams of it. The problem begins when they long to return home. This is often impossible for them to do. And should they achieve this, it will often be with lasting and grave physical or mental defects or infirmities. Exiled fairies may make use of these plants too, but will be hunted down and expelled as soon as their return is noticed. The backyard was  fenced in on three sides by fruit trees. There are, to my knowledge,  three kinds of white apples in Apple Island, but only one was present there. There are Grand Dame White Apples, large as their name suggests. These taste of sea foam. There are Sweet Maiden White Apples, which are of a medium size and remind one of cotton candy when bitten into, and there are Little Tot White Apples, which, if eaten, make people long for something that at the time is around them and forget what they really want instead. The flowers of these apples, added to a perfume or an incense, a burning oil or an air freshner, are what makes it so difficult for even fairies to leave a fairy ring when partying there. Yes, these last were the apples that grew at the Pestles’ place and  their fruits are used in successful but cruel love philtres.     

Mistress Pestle told Uncle Richearth that all she knew about Candle’s disappearance was exactly the same as what Aunt Pearl knew. Aunt Pearl had followed her to her backyard to fetch some tumeric she wanted to buy because the Gentlerains’ kitchen was out of it. The little girl had remained behind, playing in the rocky front yard, near the monticle. And when Pearl wanted to collect her child, the child was gone.

I didn’t trust the Pestles. So while the potion sellers were discussing the disappearance with Uncle Rich, I made myself invisible and sneaked into the hut to search for Candle in there.

The main floor was one room only, and practically everything the Pestles had was in it, from their working tables to their dining table and their large bed. There were several open chests and no locked ones. Candle was not there.

The attic one went up to flying, for there was no staircase, only an opening to give access to it in a thin bit of ceiling. There I found a crazy-looking woman mumbling to herself and spinning away for all she was worth. There were piles of threads and gauzy white material all over the place, and what looked like webs that were infested with small red spiders reproducing themselves. That was where the offal from the rhyme about the family came from. I searched carefully and silently. I was so pleased to find Candle was not there.

I flew down, back to the main floor, and then down to the basement. There was a young-looking man there making chicken soup in a huge cauldron. The place and the cauldron were full of chicken feet and chicken necks and there were some chopped vegetables, orange and green and yellow and white that he would throw into the brew too. What the man was preparing was Happy-Happy Soup, a supposedly hearthy food given to people who are depressed or convalescent, or who can’t even make it to convalescent by just sleeping an illness away like most of us do.  It makes you feel light and silly, and physically healthy again but never satisfies. Once you have taken it, it is very difficult to stop asking for more when you no longer need it. There are those who subsist only on this soup once they have slurped it. This makes them eternal clients of its cooks. Candle was not in the basement either. Nor was there anything there that indicated she had been. Neither the youth nor his sister perceived me as I searched the house, and I left unobserved.

Outside, I found Uncle Rich had just bought all the Pestles’ produce of Dire Paste, a pasty compound one can add to drinks or food or rub on one’s body or wings, but never for a good purpose or without secondary effects.

“Wasn’t that kind of me?” Uncle Rich said when we left. “I’ve put all this junk off the market. It’s only legal because it’s old, and old fairies and their conservative adepts refuse to have it banned.”  

And in my brain, I heard my grandfather’s voice say, “I told you to go to Evenfall. Richearth can’t fix this, foolish boy!” And I knew that no matter how much Uncle Rich spent to buy up the Pestles’ stock of Dire Paste, they would only use the money they got from him to invest in more. 

“I’ve been nice to the Pestles and now they will be nice to me. They know lots of trashy folks who should be locked up in jail but aren’t because we don’t have such things. Jails, we haven’t any jails, because trashy people there is always a surplus of and you can find these anywhere you seek for them. Now all we have to do is wait for the Pestles to spread the word that I am willing to pay to have my niece returned to her family and some scoundrel or another is bound to show up asking for ransom money and we will know where my little niece is. We needn’t roam about searching for her any longer. It will be her kidnappers who will find me. So, come home with me to have some mint julep on the front porch while we wait, you all.”