The Elfin Ship by James P. Blaylock

Author:James P. Blaylock [Blaylock, James P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781936535613
Publisher: Jabberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.
Published: 2012-06-21T06:00:00+00:00

13

News of a Fourth Companion

And that, apparently, was the end of the ‘conclave of war’. It hadn’t been much of a conclave. Most of those present hadn’t spoken a word. There hadn’t been any talk of battles or strategies or anything else – only questions about Theophile Escargot and his habit of borrowing jewelry and such. He seemed to be uncommonly ubiquitous; always racing about stealing rings, trading rings for pigs, pigs for beans, beans for octopuses, octopuses for undersea devices. He seemed to be a rather notorious and effective thief.

On the walk back to the inn, Jonathan and the Professor pondered all this, but came to no conclusions. Jonathan was relieved that he hadn’t been drummed into any army, but suspected that they hadn’t seen the end of all this business yet.

After a lunch of plaice and chips and a pint of ale, Jonathan and the Professor left Dooly to his own devices and walked the half mile along the coast road to Ackroyd’s bakery. The fog had pretty much cleared by midafternoon, and it was a fine autumn day, all things considered. The road wound in and out of the walls of the city, in among the shops and homes for a bit, then through a massive arch and along the seashore. The rocky coast was peopled by little islets, many of them simply clumps of weedy rock beaten by the tides and wind, and many with lighthouses atop them. One or two appeared to be forts, for again the muzzles of cannon were visible through dim ports. It would be a difficult coast to attack, all in all.

Children played along the sandy beaches, none of which were more than fifty yards across; and a fair number of dwarfs, some in hip boots, some with their pant legs rolled, clammed in the shallows, shoving long-tined forks beneath the sand.

The two rafters paused once or twice to peer into a particularly promising tide pool. Bright orange fish – garibaldi, likely – sported among sea-green anemones and purple urchins. Preposterous crabs and willowy nudibranchs wandered about, scavenging food and accomplishing necessary fish business. Obviously they could spend a day, a week even, fooling about in tide pools and never wear out, so they decided to press on toward the bakery and have done with their business. It took them all of two hours, in the end, to walk the half mile to Ackroyd’s bakery.

The bakery itself was a tremendous stone affair, and as soon as they got around to the leeward side of it they were overwhelmed by the smell of warm bread. It wasn’t a bad smell at all, but Jonathan puzzled over the fact that two loaves of bread in an oven smell far more wonderful than two hundred. It seemed to prove what his father had always said about moderation being a finer thing than whatever its opposite was – satiation or gluttony or something.

Ackroyd himself oversaw all the operations at the bakery, and throughout most of

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