240. Nearly West
When I told Uncle Rich I simply couldn’t stop
to have some mint julep, Alpin did not excuse himself too. I suspected it was
not his love of this drink that made him want to go to Uncle Rich’s plantation
instead of following me to wherever I went to make my life impossible. Most likely he wanted to know what his
brother-in-law would do with the Dire Paste the man had so thoughtfully bought from the
Pestles. So for once, instead of being delighted because I could be rid of
Alpin’s difficult company for a while, I forced him to tag along with me with
the threat of revealing his intentions to his sister Branna. Then I called my
sister Heather with my crystal ball because she is the person who knows the
most about each and every one of the members of our family and asked her where
exactly did Uncle Evenfall live. Just as
I thought she would, she was able to
answer my question.
“Go nearly west,” Heather said, “but not all
the way there. When you have almost reached the west, you´ll see a pile of
ruins. They are what’s left of Uncle Evenfall’s home. Uncle Brightfire’s first workshop was in that house. When Uncle
Brightfire left his parents home to live on his own, nobody knew what kind of
an ideal home to build for him. Finally,
they thought of designing one that was more like a furnace than a house, but
they didn’t know where to put it, because nobody wanted Fi for a neighbour. When
in his teens, he was not very good at controlling his gift of fire, and he
often singed people that came near him or burnt to cinders objects that he barely grazed. Gen had disappeared by
then and couldn’t be of help to Brightfire. Rich was terrified of his fiery
brother and necessarily wanted him out of his way. Wildgale only made Brightfire’s problem worst
half of the time. When he didn’t blow Fi’s fugitive fire out, he would augment
and spread it involuntarily. Evenfall took pity on Fi and allowed him to live
in his house and encouraged him to learn how to work metals and turn them into
all sorts of useful things. Brightfire practiced at Uncle Evenfall’s place and
eventually learned to control his fire
and became both a black and a white smith, the best in Apple Island and maybe in all fairyland.
But there was an accident one day and Uncle Evenfall’s house was burnt to the
ground, and its ruins are the ruins you will find when you seek his house.
But if you study these ruins, you will
find an arch that still stands. Walk through that, and you will find yourself
in the ghost of Uncle Evenfall’s house. All the rooms are there, and everything
he had in his house too.”
“Uncle Evenfall lives in the ghost of his
house?” I asked with surprise.
“That’s what I said,” replied Heather. “There
are haunted houses, in which ghosts live. And there are ghost houses which
spirits can live in as well as in any others. Inside and outside the ghost of
Uncle Even’s house, you are sure to run into cats, most of them white. Don’t
bother asking them where Uncle Evenfall is if you don’t find him home. They are
all deaf. Remember how he would take us on hunts for deaf cats? Once he has
cured them, he sets them free. There is however, one cat that you can speak to,
for he’ll hear you out. This is Catgliostro. You know how Uncle Even has his
armchair, the one he takes everywhere and often nods off in? Well this cat has
a hassock he takes with him everywhere, or rather, the hassock takes him
everywhere he goes when he goes anywhere. Catgliostro can almost always be found in Uncle Even’s house, resting on his
hassock. There is no mistaking him, and he will speak to you before you can say
hi, because he will have seen you before you have seen him. He is an occultist
cat, and very popular with old ladies who want the leaves in their teacups
read, and also with teenagers who would have him read their palms and tell them
their fortunes with a crystal ball or a deck of cards. Say hi from me to Uncle
Even and Catgliostro, will you?”
Following the sun, Alpin and Michael and I
went nearly west, and when we got there, we did see some stones and some columns
that seemed to have been part of the foundation of a house. There were also
some strange trees, young and strangely twisted and or bent and blackish, with
a few clusters of bright green needles. These
clusters made the trees look like they
were recovering from a disaster. We also saw a few white cats strolling about
the ruins. And there was an arch, just like Heather had said. And through the arch we saw the face of a
white cat. Just its face, because the rest of the cat was inside the ghost house.
And when we passed through the arch, so were we.
The house was exactly like we expected it to
be, very late nineteenth century and crowded with objects of art, books, albums
and records.
“I’m in my study,” called a drowsy voice, “second
door to the left and straight ahead till sunset!”
And there was Uncle Evenfall, sitting in his
armchair. Though it is an easy chair, it always seems to be a throne.
“Catgliostro says you are looking for a little girl. Brightfire’s youngest,” said Uncle Even. And he turned to a cat that was sitting on a hassock next to his chair and asked, “Isn’t that so, Catgliostro?”
This very large cat’s fur was lavender blue with olive green stripes. The hassock he rested on had a lilac cushion and its legs were made of wood painted a bright indigo.
“Just call the Murkee,” said Catgliostro to
Uncle Even. “Pleased to meet you in person, every one of you,” he nodded to us.
There was no need for us to be introduced,
the cat was a very well informed oracle cat and he already knew who each of us
was.
“We’ve already asked the Murkee,” I began to
say, but Uncle Even cut me short.
“But I haven’t,” he said.
Uncle Evenfall took his crystal ball from a
small round table next to his chair and the old man from the mound we had
danced with appeared in it. Or rather, a lot of soil appeared and something
stirred within it.
“How could I not tell my friend, the tender Dying
Light, what I know? But I want something in exchange for my information,”
answered the Murkee’s voice. “Not from you, Evenfall. The past moonless night I
had a lot of fun dancing jigs and ballet with those two kids you have with you there. The next moonless night, I want the
carrot-haired kid to teach me to dance the hula. It’s not yet in my repertoire,
but I’ve always longed to learn.”
“WHY ME?”
shouted Alpin indignantly.
“The other kid is a no good dancer. He held
my arm as if he wanted to twist it.”
I was very happy to hear that. It meant I hadn’t
hurt the old man at all.
“I have nothing to do with the Brightfire
baby and no reason to help find her!” protested Alpin.
“He’ll do it, Ters,” said Uncle Evenfall, “so
spill your beans.”
“The Brightfire pipsqueak has friends. And
she went off to be with them. Her mum is such a harried woman, what with all
those kids and her difficult husband that she never even noticed her kid had
packed a bag with Hawaii or Bust!
painted on it and was carrying it when she disappeared.”
“And her friends are Hawaiian?” asked Uncle
Even.
“No, they are friends of yours too. Sort of.
They are the Prickly Kids you watch over.”
I think I have said before that some fairies,
when they are born, do not find parents and remain in the forests, beaches,
lakes or other sites where they first appeared, dealing only with the local
flora and fauna and becoming isolated from other fairies and their clans. These are called Mother
Nature’s own children. But there are
other fairies who don’t like the people that offer to be their parents and refuse to follow them to
what would be their family home. These kids are very unfriendly and in truth want no kind of parents at all and usually end up meeting other choosy,
picky kids and they band up and live together in fields or caves. They are
sometimes joined by kids who run away from home. They are known as prickly kids,
because all they say when someone speaks to them is “Shoo! Go away! I hate you!” They are likely to throw stones or rotten
fruit at you, and they may bite and scratch if you get too close and people
decide it is best to leave them to themselves and on their own they remain.
When I asked my Uncle Even what he had to do
with prickly kids, he said Uncle Gen believed no child under seven should be on
its own, but a group of Pricklies he found kind parents for hated him for this
and refused to be accomodated in these nice homes. Gen was told in no uncertain
terms to mind his own busines and he took to watching over the kids from a
distance. When he had to disappear, Uncle Even promised Gen to keep an eye on
these kids and help them if they got into trouble, which rarely happened, but
it did now and again.
“There is a camp in a field in this island
where prickly kids have always lived. When I promised to watch them, well, that
was hundreds of years ago. The original Pricklies grew up and went their ways.
But younger ones have always taken their place. There are a few now out there.
They know who I am and they tolerate me, because I have never tried to control
them. I don’t tell them what to do and I tolerate their hostility. Not that I think
well of it. You can be sure I don’t. And I tell them so, and they allow me to
do that because from time to time I have helped them with problems they
couldn’t solve on their own. ”
So the next thing to do was contact the
Pricklies. This could not be done by crystal ball, because these kids didn’t
own any, so Uncle Even got up from his chair and off we went to the field.
“There they are!” said Uncle Even, pointing at a field full of thistles directly below us. “I need to speak with you!” shouted Uncle Even towards the field, and a few heads shot up from among the brambles. “This is important. I’m searching for a missing child.”
The Pricklies must really respect Uncle
Evenfall, for they actually spoke to him and gave us the information we needed.
I had thought they would consider doing this squealing and would clam up, but
no. They said some mortals had abandoned their pet rabbit in a mortal road and there a Prickly found it, but not before it
got itself wounded. Since the rabbit had belonged to the mortal world, it
needed to have its wound healed before it could be turned into a fairy rabbit.
A couple of Pricklies went to see the Pestles to buy a salve that could cure
the rabit’s wound. There they had met Candle, who was flying from the
Gentlerains’ garden to that of the Pestles chasing after a bluebird. They made
friends, and, from that day on, she, while her mother was at work in Uncle Gen’s
kitchen, would steal away to visit her friends.Candle became closely attached
to an even younger child than she was. His name was Spikey, and he was much
impressed by the way she could set fire to things. She told him all about her
father’s forge, and other stories that had to do with fire, about firebirds and
salamanders and volcanoes. He was specially fascinated with what she told him
about the most spectacular fires she knew about, the eruptions of volcanoes. Spikey expressed a wish to see a volcano, and
Candle, like the friendly fairy she was, decided to grant it to him. She
promised she would take him to Hawaii to show him one. And that was what she
had done.
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