259. The Restored

 259. The Restored

While Uncle Gen was getting here, Thistle got into a fight with the prince and the ticket-seller, becasue she didn’t want to give up the basket with the faypounds. Thistle fairies are famous tightwads, and though Thistle does not usually live up to this reputation, this time she was determined to. In the turmoil, she got to tear off the prince´s mask.

“Bunglemore!” I cried, as I scurried to help my sister, and the three fighters ceased grappling.

“Indeed they’ve bungled! But don’t encourage them!” shouted Thistle. “I’m not only going to deprive them of this money. I’m going to have them sued for the fall into the hole in the floor. It should have been cordoned off!”

“Thistle, I know these people. They are Uncle Richearth’s kidnappers.”

Elucubrius, already invisible, managed to disappear even more, but Thistle caught good hold of Bunglemore.

“Calm down, all of you!” intervened Dad. “There’s a remedy for everything save Death. And there are those who are working on that. Everybody freeze!”

Elucubrius decided to show himself and try to explain to Dad that he hadn’t done anything wrong.

“Could be,” said Dad, “but you can tell that to the butler. I mean, to my little brother. He loves to hear heartrending assertions. He’ll be judge. I only say, calm down. Everything will fall into place.”

“If you mean Gentlerain, he is the one who left us stuck in this forest. You mean him, don’t you? No, please don’t call him. Call Richie, who is kind to us. Gentlerain told us that if we ever got into trouble again he would send us back to hell ipso facto.  We’ll return the money, but  please don’t sue us, because we can’t give you all your ferocious daughter is threatening to ask for. Our families have disowned us and we can’t appeal to them for dough. We meant to make some here with the museum.”

Dolphus, who had been standing near Dad, waiting for a chance to be able to speak to him, said very politely, “Thank you, your majesty, for inviting me to see this show. This is the best show I have ever seen.”

“Fool!” spat Thistle. “Either you are lying or you’ve never seen another!”

Dad patted Dolphus on the head beaming on him, at the same time saying to Thistle, “Come, sweetie, return the basket to these men. Can’t you see they are in big trouble and tragedy awaits them? They’ve done what they could.”

“Neither to them nor to you am I returning this,” said Thistle, clutching the basket more tightly.

“But I will give you more than there is in there when we get home, dear.”

“I will give one of these coins to each of those who have withstood the deplorable spectacle. So they can go see a better one somewhere else. Look here, Daddy, I don’t know how you can be so condescending with these rascals. It’s not just the lousy show, or even the accident they provoked. They have been making fun of Atty, and I won’t forgive them that. Nobody makes fun of my brother.”

“I don’t think that was their intention, dear. They didn’t mean to. I think they admire Atty, but they don’t understand this type of character well enough to represent him properly. And leave Atty be, Thissy. He’s doing fine. He won, as he always does. He put the cat in the castle and he is finding out that giving pity can also be a way to achieve one’s goals. Any day now he will be a better manipulator than your grandfather.”

“You are trying to manipulate me!” cried Thistle.

It was too late for Dad to listen to Elucubrius’s pleas. Uncle Gen had appeared.

“Again?” he asked Elucubrius and added, “Why doesn’t this surprise me?”

Begging for mercy, Elucubrius and Bunglemore told their story.

“Museum? I told you to sell the flour to whoever bought the Jenny Thrush Farm from you, because I was fed up with you guys and with Richie.”

“These fellows sold the Jenny Thrush Farm?” asked Dad. The Jenny Thrush is the best raspberry plantation near Minced Forest.

“Against my advice, Richie gave it to them. He felt sorry for them for the time they spent in hell. He thought sending them there was excessive of AEternus.”

“Confirmed. Your little brother is definitely a retard,” said Dad to Uncle Gen.

“But he is my little brother. And these two are Tam Bagpiper and Johnny Truism’s black sheep.”

“Ah!” said Dad. I didn’t know who the two people Uncle Gen had mentioned were, but apparently Dad did. “Over here everybody is something of  somebody’s.”

“And since the farm was ours, we sold it,” said Bunglemore. “Because Richie planted all sorts of vegetables and stuff, but we had to harvest them. And that takes time and effort, so we just sold the place so someone else would do the job. We got a neat sum for that, don’t think we didn’t, because the tomatoes and the turnips were beautiful to behold, like everything Richie plants.”

“Tomatoes is what we should have brought with us!” said Thistle.

“This is what I get for humoring my baby brother,” shrugged Uncle Gen.

“Well, listen to your big brother, who is far cleverer than you and Richie put together, and forget these two. They are not your worse problem. That would be the Rag Hag’s legacy.”

“The Rag Hag left her mill to these nitwits? Most unlikely. No, that has to be a lie of theirs.”

“Richie told us that this mill had just been abandoned because his fancy nephew had pulverized the hag to please his girlfriend, and that if we were quick to put the flour here in sacks we could sell it to the same guy who bought the Jenny Thrush farm, and that if we repaired and restrored the mill to its former splendour we might find a buyer for it too,” explained Elucubrius. “But since we don’t like putting flour in sacks, we soon got tired of that and it ocurred to us we could turn this place into a museum of evil and make our money that way. But what worries Mr. Oberon is, we think, those little boxes on the table. Or so we think, because it was when he saw those that he got worked up.”

“Who knows what you will find in those, Genny,” said Dad to my uncle.

“I? You saw them first. All yours!”

“Yes, and I mean to deal with them by entrusting them to you.”

“You can’t. I’m not your servant.”

“Ah, you are nobody’s servant. You always make that clear. But you are a preventer. Shouldn’t you have prevented this? Feel a little guilty, will you, Gen?”

“Preventers are volunteers. We do what we can to prevent disasters without answering to anyone. And we don’t take orders from anybody. We hardly even speak with those who don’t belong to our siblinghood. Though we do help everyone we can.”

“Then help me!” said Dad. “Tell me you can resist turning the people in those boxes back into themselves again. Come on, I want to hear you say that. Say you can resist!”

“There is no knowing what there might be in there. Probably not people of ours. There could be mortals. Even monsters.”

“Tell me you can resist. Come on, tell me you are going to make a half-turn and leave the way you came. That you will be able to pass on this.”

Tired of hearing pointless arguing, I decided to take action.

“I’ll do this myself,” I thought. “I have the rag and I will take care of this.”

And without more ado, I drew the rag out of my backpack and swatted one of the urns. A bird, a crow I think it was, for it crowed, dashed off like a bat out of hell.

“Madcap!” shouted Uncle Gen. “Hold it, Arley! You’re being reckless. Attention to detail is important. These boxes have to be weighed first.”

“Let your uncle take care of this, Arley. You know he can’t leave a table without clearing. Give him the rag this minute. What do you want that piece of trash for?”

“That piece of trash is lethal. How can you let your son go about with it?” Uncle Gen asked Dad.

“Haven’t you heard me? I just told him to foist it on you.”

“Yes, better late than never. Fine, I’ll take charge. But because of my nephew. Not because I am mentally ill.”

“Weigh these?” I asked, again to put an end to the arguing.

 “Yes. They don’t all weigh the same. The ashes of a humble sparrow do not weigh the same as the ashes of a wizard masquerading as a sparrow. We must have a notion about what we are to find. And if what turns up tries to attack us, either because it is aggressive or because it has mistaken us for the hag, we have to be ready to defend ourselves.”

“That means we give them a second swat with the rag?” I asked.

“We may have to. But we´ll right it later with knowledge.”

“Why don’t you use a scanner?” asked Dad.

“We could do something of the kind, but not just any scanner will do. We would only see ashes. We would have to take this to a specialist.”

“Don’t forget to take those two bunglers with you. I don’t want them in my forest.”

“This forest is not just your territory,” said Uncle Gen.

“Then you should have taken care of the hag. She almost killed two of my sons.”

“And me,” said Alpin.

“Well, yes,” said Dad, “him too.

“We’ll  have to give the hag credit for trying to do that,” muttered Uncle Gen, as he made a huge metal cage materialize before us. “Come, Arley, let’s see what one of these boxes weighs and then you will stick it in the cage and jump out and stand by the door ready to shut it as fast as you can the minute I have struck the box with the rag. You’re very quick, you can do it. Let’s get on with this, we haven’t got all day.”

“Maybe you don’t,” said Dad, “but I am going to sit here and watch. You’ve sparked my curiosity. Someone I know might appear. He would have to thank us for restoring him. Let’s see what you find. Grateful people can be useful.”

“I’m hungry,” said Alpin.

“Yeah, you know what? So am I!” answered Dad. “Let’s do takeaway.”

Uncle Gen looked at me and made a face of desperation and the gesture of being about to hit Dad with the rag.

“Hey, you!” said Dad. “Be careful handling that. And don’t strike the jar with the hag in it by mistake.”

“I left that at home. Safely tucked away,” I said.

Uncle Gen and I began to do the job while Dad sent Puck for pizza and ice-cold drinks.

From the next box I struck, which weighed very little, popped a small and very dizzy squirrel. We would have just released it, but Heather insisted on adopting it and she and this creature seemed to like each other and reached an agreement. By the time we were done with the boxes, Heather had a band of animals and insects ready to follow her to the small forest that is part of her ideal home and people it. The group included toads and frogs and butterflies and mice and bats, rabbits, spiders, a garter snake, owls, a bear cub and a great big grey wolf that had risen from his ashes howling ferociously but whom Uncle Gen was able to calm down speaking to him in lupuslingo, which is a language werewolves speak to wolves and these listen to and understand. After ascertaining that this wolf was no werewolf himself, and promising to teach me lupuslingo, our uncle allowed the wolf to join Heathie’s band, all these animals being seriously warned that they would only eat pet food from now on and would never feel hungry enough to want to hunt for their own food.

Aside from these animals, the boxes contained several humans, including five Hungarians, and Uncle Gen spoke to all of these too and left them in the hands of his assistants who were to study ways of reinserting them in their world causing the least trouble. 

One little boy kept sobbing for a calico dragon. He said the hag had slugged it before she slugged him, so we allowed him to wait among us until it did turn up. He had magnificent lungs, for he didn’t quit bawling for a second. This was really annoying and we were so relieved when the dragon appeared and the kid finally shut up.

Among the fay we returned to life was a Grindlebul elf everyone believed had emigrated to Australia, three Prickly kids, who left without a thank you,  and the ex cook of the Malone family, Mrs. Meabh. Mrs. Meabh had gotten tired of cooking carrotless stew for the Malones. She studied chemistry, obtained a doctorate, and experimented with new techniques, but her ex employers didn’t appreciate that. All they liked was the carrotless stew and maybe mashed potatoes and pea soup, so she quit her job. This lady, who in my opinion should have changed her name when she decided to become a cook, for it means “she who intoxicates,” said she wanted to work for my mum and Dad said no, for him. Uncle Gen and I said nothing, but we glanced at each other and shook our heads, glimpsing trouble on the horizon, because Mrs. Meabh is a stunner. Dad saw us and explained that he didn’t have a cook who emulsified and employed gelling and freezing and foaming and other modern molecular techniques. Alpin was interested in employing her too, but he couldn’t compete with Dad, so he was quiet for the moment.   

Next to rise from ashes was a small cat we all recognized immediately.       

“Mauelito!” Dad and Uncle Gen and I shouted in unison.

“So this is where you were at! Will you return with AEternus? You should,” said Dad. “He is actually wandering outside his home searching for you, meowing like a crazy cat lady and other times looking like his six year old version. Did you leave of your own accord? Was it a falling out you had?”

I will have more to say about Little Mauel later on. At that moment, he said he didn’t want to talk about it and he stayed to watch us work, though he promised that when we were done, he would follow me to Grandpa’s home. This cat, who is small and delicate as if made of sugar and destined to be a cake decoration, is like a dog. He goes everywhere with grandpa and is perpetually at grandpa’s ankles, especially when AEternus plays golf. Mauel is so much like a dog that when Grandpa walks his pack of a dozen assorted breeds, Mauel proudly marches up front and leads the doggies. He has all the neighbourhood dogs terrified of him and when their paths cross during these walks, these dogs all stand aside and make way for him to pass. With all the fuss about my new nieces and nephews and the museums and the boxes I hadn’t learned Mauel had gone missing. He is very silent. He was, I have been told, Grandpa’s first pet, and slept with him in his cradle. So it was no wonder Grandpa had left home and was wandering about crazed seeking for him.

 And then, when we got to the last box…