263. Malrose Gets a Gun

 263. Malrose Gets a Gun

One Saturday afternoon I was crossing Minced Forest on my  way home. Little Mauel was with me. When we were nearing Cathsheba’s Nook, Maui suddenly bolted behind the trees and the bushes. I heard hissing and snarling and scuffling and rushed to see what was happening. And right in front of Cathsheba’s former home, I had to separate little Mauel and a great big cat who looked more surprised than furious and turned out to be no other than Pedubastis, the very sociable cat from the Temple of Mayet.

“What is this about?” I asked the cats.

Pedubastis shrugged and made gestures of knowing as much as I did, and Little Mauel growled at the blue cottage where Cathsheba had once lived. I saw at once that there were little fay cat children, shifting from cats to tots,  all over the place, on the roof, watching from the windows, and now coming out the door to answer my question.

“We’re the Atshebies. Shebie and Atty’s kids,” they said in one voice. “Mum lets us use this place as our dollhouse. We come here to play. And Pedubastis comes to look after us and teach us Cattusgyptios. He’s like a part-time nanny.”

“I’m your Uncle Arley,” I said. “Your daddy’s brother.”

“We know,” they answered. “You are to be Neferclari’s fay  godfather when we have a name day party. If ever.”

“Why haven’t you had one already? By the way, this pugnacious cat is Little Mauel, the favorite pet of your great-grandfather AEternus.”

“We know. He didn’t want to be our nanny. And now he is angry with Pedubastis for accepting the job. Part-time job only, but we´re learning lots from him. We can speak Cattusgyptios fluently and all.”

“Is that what this quarrel is about?”

“We surmise. And we can’t have a name day party because our mum doesn’t want to invite her mother and her mother’s gang to it.”

“I see.”

Little Mauel began to purr saying he was only meant to be in charge of the runt of the litter, because that was AEternus’ choice for a godchild.  

“And you want to do that now?” I asked, because up till then he hadn’t.

“Maybe,” purred the capricious little cat.

“You’re jealous of Pedubastis, isn’t that it?” I asked him, but before he could answer, another of my relatives showed up.

“Hi,” said my brother Malrose, appearing from behind the trees and the bushes. He was carrying a long package, all wrapped in brown Manila paper and bound with pure silver strings. “What’s all this noise about?”

“What have you got there?” asked Neferedi. She was the most curious of the catbabies and they were all already around Malrose.

“And who are you?”

I introduced Malrose to his latest nieces and nephews and he smiled. Up till then he had only looked tired and worried.

Malrose explained to us that he was just back from visiting Dragon Holt, and asked the kids if they knew their fiery cousins.

“I’ll take them to Fi’s so they can meet each other,” mewed Little Mauel.

“I’m going too,” insisted Pedubastis.

“Right now!” cried the Atshebies excitedly.

“Good time for for it, they’re all at their daddy’s workshop today,” said Malrose, and the babies and the cats hit the road to Dragon Holt immediately.

“Would you have answered Neferedi’s question?” I asked my brother.

“This is a shotgun,” said Malrose grimly. “I had to order one from Brightfire.”

“Heavens! Why?” I couldn’t hide my surprise. No one needs those things in Apple Island.

“They’re arriving in droves, Arley, the crazy people who want to know what Betabel is about, and they are driving me crazy. They’re trampling on the lower crops and eating the higher ones. They take tomatoes home as souvenirs, fill sacks with potatoes and onions and crush the strawberries and raspberries when they sit on them. I give things out free, but I need to control what goes, so I will know what’s left and what has to be replaced. They don’t even need this stuff. One starts to take and everyone else emulates.”

“You are going to shoot at your visitors?”

“They are not visitors. They are prybing nebbies who have invaded my land. You don’t know the nightmare I am living, little brother.”

And I went with him to see what was happening in The Malrose Orchards in person and to try to keep him from employing a gun.

It was unbelievable. Practically everybody was there. There were fays, ghosts, and even some mortals. The once peaceful riverine islet was infested with loud picnickers waiting to see what the end of the world would be like, each there  for his or her own reasons. Some sang and chanted disturbing hymns, some munched on faux chicken legs from large hampers, some were setting up posters that welcomed aliens from outer space, others were simply busy stealing fruit to sell in mortal markets. The thirteen hills were infested with off-island marauders and sensation-seekers as well as Apple Island dwellers who were overly concerned with these goings on.

And poor Betabel, the only visible cause of it all, was standing up on the roof of the Short Tower at Thirteenth Hill, surrounded by people who were lying flat on the ground around it with their hands raised in, I imagined, imploration. Betabel looked different. Not just haggard, instead of fresh and tanned and healthy. Her clothes looked shabby and stained and she no longer had long hair, and what was left of  her locks mostly  looked a dusty gray. And she wore a dull conical hat instead of the becoming and flowery large-brimmed one.

“The apparitions told her to cut off her hair and cast it to the sky to appease the clouds. She did that, and everybody here that could grabbed a lock and kept it for a relic or a souvenir. How they fought over these! The spooks also told her to wear a pilos instead of a petasos. And to tear her clothes and stain them with ashes. So the end of the world wouldn’t come,” bitterly said Betabel’s sister, Sweet Cicely. “Nobody has seen anything but her, and these visions now come to her in dreams, and tell her to do silly things like that. And now she won’t come down from the top of the tower till the world ends, because it is the only way the world will be safe and not do that. People try to feed her there, but she won’t eat. And we can’t get her to come down. The more people come here, the more people come here,” sighed Cecy in desperation. “And she hasn’t slept in her bed for days.”

“We’ll get her down when I drive this blasted crowd of whackos and pryers and alien chasers away from my property!” declared Malrose heatedly, unwrapping the parcel Fi had given him.

 “Wait!” I cried. “Why don’t you consult an expert first?”

“In what?” asked Malrose.

And then Don Caralampio appeared next to me and said, “She’s totally convinced she’s seeing these beings. She truly believes in them. That is all I can say.”

And then Mr. Carl Gustav Jung, who was with him, spoke out too, and agreed that indeed she did. Betabel was no fraud.

“Speak to her! Tell her not to listen to nonsense!” shouted Malrose over the chanting and the chattering, and to enforce silence, Malrose shot at the air with his solid silver shotgun. A large and noisy one it was, loud as Epon’s trumpet. People screamed when they heard the shot, but they didn’t leave. All that happened was that, surprisingly, some of the invaders produced weapons of their own too, and suddenly there were a number of gun-happy folks shooting at the clouds. With spears and arrows too.

“You’ll anger them!” Betabel began to scream. “They will drown you in storms and strike you with lightning bolts!”

But for all her frenzy, she could barely be heard and wasn’t listened to.

And then Uncle Richearth appeared and said, “Hmmmm!”

And Peter Booter appeared, undoubtedly stalking my uncle, and throughout the shoot-out said that  he had always found this sort of incidents very interesting  

And Uncle Richearth asked my brother Malrose if he would sell him the island. He asked writing his question on a small notebook where he had been jotting down cyphers. And all the while people shooting until they ran out of munition and Betabel said the mysterious beings had told her all this would happen. The air would be rent and sewn with missiles, they had said. And she said everybody had to bring well-sealed bottles of olive oil and cast them into both rivers to appease the waters that would grow and grow angry if not. And the naiads rose out of the rivers to protest, saying they wanted none of that and all we needed was for the rivers to be polluted, but before they could make themselves heard, the crowd dispersed somewhat as many of those present  rushed off to find olive oil.

And as the crowd thinned out, I spotted Tansy Mandrakecott drawing sketches of Betabel.  

And I felt I was going mad myself.