“Do you know, young and enterprising marauder, grandnephew and godson of mine whom
I have always supported and am here to protect now, exactly whose ship you have
seized?” the Lady Celestial asked Esmeraldo.
“Of course he doesn’t! What questions you do ask,
Celestial!” protested the Lady Divina, “And don’t speak as if I weren’t here to
do the same as you for my very own grandson!”
“There were these two nitwits on it! On the ship, I mean,”
said Azuline when her brother remained silent while the ladies glared at each
other ominously.
“And what has your brother done with them?” asked the Lady
Divina.
“Reduced them and chained them up in the brig or something
like that, I think,” explained the little blue fairy.
“Ah, the whole of this ship is a luxury, grand class brig!” sighed the
Lady Celestial.
Esmeraldo pressed a note on his concertina and sang, “That
confinement is temporary! I mean to sell them into slavery! To some panjandrum
from Barbary! They deserve this for their knavery! Who are they to be defying
me?”
“Oh,
the overboiling noodles!” cried the Lady Celestial.
“Noodles and all, I don’t think it would be right to sell
Bunglemore Bagpiper and Elucubrius Truism,” said the Lady Divina. “And who
would have them anyway? AEternus knows their dads don’t want them. They were
pink pleased when they heard their sons were stuck in a galley. Really
relieved!”
“These people have names?” asked Esmeraldo.
“And hefty family names. Now, listen carefully, Azuline and
Esmeraldo, my dearest grandchildren, because your poor old gran is about to
give you a piece of sound advice. Speaking as we are of names, don’t let
yourselves be frightened by big last ones. Yours is as good as anyone’s, and
anyone else’s may be presumed as good as yours too. I won’t say not because it
isn’t wise to brag. But the advice I want to give you is that when you are
adults, if you ever come across an unclaimed fay baby in a tree or on a
toadstool or a bed of seaweeds or wherever, if the child tells you his name is
Bunglemore, get out of there leaving it behind as fast as you can!”
“I must say I agree with that,” said the Lady Celestial,
only a very little grudgingly. "It's better not to reap disastrous
children. You can listen to your gran on this one.”
“What if his name is Elucubrius?”asked Azuline. “Do we run
too?”
“That name is more misleading, but even for an intellectual
parent like you could be, dear, it can’t be a convenient name for one’s baby to
have alloted himself,” said the Lady Celestial.
“They are going to sue us,” said the Lady Divina glumly.
“Unless…Did you give them beer to drink and
are they watching mortal TV, Esemeraldo, darling?”
“What?”
said
the Lady Celestial.”Why would he have to do that?”
“Because that is how Bunglemore and Elucubrius treated my
boy Richie when they kidnapped him. And that is why Richie wanted to forgive
them, because he felt they had been kind to their captive. So maybe these prats
will think they have been treated right too if they get beer and TV, and will
forgive us.”
“Daddy?”
cried
Azuline aghast. “Daddy was kidnapped?”
“By the two nitwits,” nodded the Lady Celestial, “which
doesn’t say much for your papá, does it?”
“And now the scoundrels will want to apply the law of tit
for tat!”
“What law is that?” asked Azuline.
“If somebody does something criminal to you, you can only
hold them responsible for it until you do something equally criminal to them.”
“Ah, don’t you worry about your father, Azuline. Richie is always being harassed by someone or
another,” said the Lady Celestial. “And he has always risen above it, unscathed
and gleaming brightly and smiling charmingly.”
“Yes, he does tend to find reasons to forgive every
offender, my generous boy does, But AEternus doesn’t.”
“AEternus is a vengeful fussbudget,” sentenced the Lady
Celestial.
“The galley was his idea. And you know how worked up he
gets when his ideas don’t turn out the way he means them to,” said Divina.
“Maybe if Esmeraldo does sell the nitwits to some barbarian
AEternus will be content. He hates these fools. That should make him happy,”
suggested the Lady Celestial.
“But Richie won’t be. He put all those jewels and
delicacies aboard the dubious ship Outrageous
so the nitwits wouldn’t feel too bad being imprisoned there. And AEternus was
enraged enough about that. And now Esmeraldo, with his violence, has made the
nitwits free.”
“No, Granny Divina,” protested Azuline, “they’re chained
up.”
“But they’ve been kidnapped by your brother just like they
sequestered your father, and now they are no longer worse than we are. We will
have to let them go. So that they won’t hold us responsible for their having been
kidnapped!”
“What your gran is trying to tell you,” explained the Lady
Celestial, “is that your daddy won’t be upset about this, but your grandpa sure
will. AEternus is going to blow his top!”
“I would like to see that,”said Esmeraldo, very cockily.
“Look, here, Esmeraldo, I saw at once you were full of
promise when I first spotted you, which is why I chose you for Richearth’s
lawful heir, but I don’t see how I will be able to protect you if you insist on
following the path you are now on. Yes, I think you have made it clear you are
a pirate of success, and very capable of causing all sorts of trouble to older
and far more experienced men, but we don’t want anything like that sort of
competition in our family. So get on
with selling off those two idiots and once that’s done, surrender your hoe and
your hammer to me, and quit playing at being a pirate and we’ll find a more
suitable game for you to play from now on. One that won’t make you enter into conflict
with your grandpa.”
“Do I get to keep the galley, Madam Great Aunt and
Godmother Lady Celestial?”
“That will depend on how your Grandpa digests these
overboiled noodles.”
“But how can you advise this child to sell people? As if
things weren’t bad enough already without his embarking on the slave trade. Really,
Celestial!” protested Divina.
“Well, yes, I know we don’t do that,and this wouldn’t be
like us, but I only thought it might make AEternus find this mess amusing. He
hates those two fools and thinks they are doing too well on that luxurious
galley. Well, AEternus is your husband! You fix this, then. But I won’t allow
anyone to blame Esmeraldo for this incident.”
While the two ladies were squabbling about how to handle
their overboiled noodles, a third lady decided to join the teaparty. The Lady
of Lake Jittery rose timidly from her watery home and…
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