Chapter 11 - Moon Over the Other Desolate Castle

In the midst of a moonlit dreamland glade, from the top of a tall ladder, there came a cough that wobbled the rungs. Honeydew stood at the ladder’s base. She took a seat on the lowest rung on seeing it wobble, set her elbows on her knees, her chin in her hands, and looked into her hand-mirror. She waited for Mr. Grey.

Another cough descended, followed by Mr. Grey’s voice. “I think I heard wheels on roots. It sounds like an approaching cart.”

“What?” Honeydew called back. She snapped her mirror shut and searched for him among the boughs. But Mr. Grey had almost reached the bottom by then. She hopped off the rungs and held the side while he stepped off. “What did you say?” she asked again. She took one of the gathered apples from his arm.

“I said,” began Mr. Grey. He stopped and winced his eyes, preparing for a sneeze. Honeydew waited. He held it back, and let out a hard breath to clear his nose.

Mr. Grey opened his mouth again to speak. But a fit of coughing took him suddenly. Honeydew waited. A sharper, attentive look entered her eyes. She asked, “Are you good?”

Mr. Grey nodded. Then, the grey arm holding the apples went limp. The apples fell to the forest floor with leafy thuds. A tock later, with a heavier thud, Mr. Grey fell after them.

Many moments after this incident, Honeydew and Mr. Grey emerged from a knot of pumpkin trees into a moonlit clearing. Mr. Grey walked a little behind, and carried neither ladder nor luggage. Honeydew had the whole bundled kit hoisted to her shoulder. She looked across the clearing. An oddly shaped carriage drawn by a single palfrey lay under the shadows of the opposite boughs. In a loud voice Honeydew said, “You in the carriage. Do you know any doctors nearby? Can you drive us? This guy’s hypochondriacal tonight.”

Mr. Grey protested. “I’m fit enough to carry my-” But between fighting another sneeze and Honeydew’s warning glance, Mr. Grey realized he wouldn’t be carrying his end of the ladder.

A figure moved on the carriage bench. It said nothing, but they saw a small hand wave them forward. They crossed the clearing under the oval of a bright, gibbous moon. It reflected on their foreheads; Honeydew’s shiny with sweat from carrying their burden, Mr. Grey’s damp from some other source.

They reached the other side and examined the driver under the shadows of the boughs. He looked just the same as the working class did in other Odormoats: tiny, a plain robe, hairy. A pipkin stoat like every other. Also like every other, this stoat’s first greeting was of the laconic kind. He only held the reins of the palfrey and nodded.

Honeydew dropped the ladder and luggage off her shoulder with an annoyed shrug. She said, “I asked if you knew a doctor. This guy’s ill.”

“I just drive,” said the stoat. He fixed his beady eyes on the palfrey’s mane, but jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Talk to the lord.”

They walked around the horse to the body of the carriage. They saw the vehicle wasn’t a standard model. Instead of a traditional covered box with seating for two to six, the carriage chassis supported a tiny, stone castle. Rounded towers bunched up to form a stepped, wedding-cake-like fortress, topped in thatch-roofed cones. From their position on the ground, the castle sitting atop the carriage bed reached above Mr. Grey and Honeydew’s heads at its highest pinnacle - though not by much - where a tiny silken banner fluttered feebly.

Beyond the modestly-soaring towers, however, the castle carried a second-hand, foreboding look. Drainpipe chimneys jutted from the roof at bent angles, and caught the Dreamland breezes in their smokeless holes with a hollow, moaning noise. Most of the windows were dark and shuttered. The curtains behind the glass - a mishmash of differently-patterned handkerchiefs stained by long use - were drawn shut. Only at the front of the castle, and the set of iron, dollhouse doors, did light glimmer from the diminutive windows. It shone across a facade of wide stairs, carved from a single, regular-sized boulder.

This front stair also acted as the stepping platform of the carriage. A filled glass beaker - round and tapered, but also warped, like a sagging pear, and stoppered by a shiny pebble - sat on the bottom step. Bright, inky words on the label read, ‘Drink me.’

Honeydew tapped her chin. “There’s light. Someone’s home at least.”

Mr. Grey eyed the bottle. He noticed Honeydew eyeing it too. He said, “We don’t know how owners of such an estate would receive people of modest means. Or people our size.”

“Guessing the bottle handles that second part. Why else would it be there?”

“Should we drink strange bottles? Just because the label says so?”

“You need medicine. And this is the first peopled place we’ve seen since the carnival.”

Honeydew’s words rang familiar to Mr. Grey; he’d said something like them to Tom not long ago. He looked over at the stoat. “What does the drink do?”

“It shrinks us, right?” asked Honeydew. The stoat shrugged. “Well it’s worth trying.” Honeydew reached for the bottle.

“We could knock-” began Mr. Grey, but Honeydew immediately plucked the pebble cork loose.

They heard a pop as open air met the liquid inside. A choir of voices within launched into a rousing, operatic symphony. The voices sang light and high; pitch-shifted, so that the music sounded like that of many synchronized songbirds, working together in a feathered orchestra.

Honeydew lifted the bottle to her nose and sniffed. “No smell. It’s easily the loudest liquid I’ve met.”

“We don’t need to drink,” said Mr. Grey. He looked back at the stoat driver, hoping for advice.

Mr. Grey, however, turned out to be correct. Honeydew brought the beaker to her lips, but just as she began tilting her head back, both she and Mr. Grey noticed the trees shooting up along their trunks. The clearing spread wider and wider, and the grass bloomed toward their eyes. Mr. Grey pulled his violin coffin off the ladder - just in case, he thought - and both rushed over to the stone step. They climbed atop just before they became too short to reach.

Fortunately, the enchantment also shrank everything which was convenient for them to have smaller. Their clothes shrank, as did Mr. Grey’s violin; he reflected that he probably had the world’s smallest now. The ‘drink me’ beaker did not shrink, and Honeydew went from holding it with one hand, to holding with both, to hugging it, to letting it drop on the step. As their world yawned out around the two, the bottled enchantment also warped. The little songbird voices turned deeper, like voices of people singing their way through a fast-forwarded puberty. When Mr. Grey and Honeydew stopped shrinking - at the perfect height, where the castle became a genuine, looming, gothic war fortification - the voices singing in the bottle were those of a baritone men’s choir.

Honeydew scratched her head and stared at her warped image on the glass beaker. It now matched them in height. “Why did it say, ‘drink me’?” she asked Mr. Grey.

“It’s King’s Law. Required on all enchanted potions.”

“You knew it would make me small?”

“Not exactly. I don’t think the bottle usually plays its given enchantment.”

“It made us the right size.” She stared up at the dark castle walls. “It’s a different prospect at the right size.”

“At least this frog in my throat is smaller now,” said Mr. Grey, attempting levity without the tone to match.

“Same ratio,” said Honeydew. She led them up the huge-tiny steps.

At the top of the long, breathtaking stairs, they arrived before the set of dollhouse doors. The doors now had the proper castle stature. The iron banding was thicker, the rivets stronger, the wood darker, grainier, and heavier. The only windows shining with light - the ones on either side of these doors - shone brighter now. They shone, however, with a parchment-temperature, which looked somehow less brilliant in this more luminous state; in the way shining a brighter light in an empty room only highlights its vacancy.

Honeydew raised a hand to the silver wedding-ring knocker. The door swung in before her knuckles. A tall and stately man with a hairless head, and the button-down, ebony-and-ivory cardigan robe of a manservant, looked at them down a long nose. He set his dull brown eyes on Honeydew first, as though checking her for dust. Then he moved them in a calm, graceful way onto Mr. Grey, and did the same to him.

The man breathed slowly and softly through thin nostrils. His presence was such that both Honeydew and Mr. Grey felt interrupting the inspection would have been somehow improper. Honeydew finally made a halfhearted click of greeting and said, “Hey. We’re lost.”

The man nodded once, as if informing her she was correct. He said, in a voice so thin it was almost a whisper, “A pleasure to greet you, Ms…?”

“Honeydew.”

He nodded. “And Mr…?” turning to Mr. Grey.

Mr. Grey, his heart beating with happy anticipation, said, “Mr. Grey. A pleasure, Mr…?”

“By your leave, sir and madam, I will take on the appellation of ‘Butler’. Among a family - which this castle’s residents are - names can become, I dare say, cumbersome. It is a convenience to refer to each other by profession. If you are pleased to do so, kindly refer to this humble servant as ‘Butler’. That is my profession.”

“That’s fine,” said Mr. Grey. His heart, dejected, resumed its normal pace.

The stately man blinked once. “How may I serve you this evening?”

Honeydew said, “Do you have a doctor? Or can you drive us to a hospital?”

“We opened that ‘drink me!’ bottle,” added Mr. Grey. “Normally we’re regular - or rather, larger - sized.”

The butler blinked again, as if nodding. He said, “The thunder of unfamiliar voices at the front entry disrupted our family’s dinner. We thought perhaps it might be the dragon. Or perhaps, giants.”

“No dragons,” said Honeydew. “And little giants.”

Mr. Grey said, “We don’t wish to offend. If now’s not convenient-” Honeydew elbowed Mr. Grey before he could finish.

“The family waits in the foyer. You may accompany me there.” The butler stepped back and held the door open with perfect grace of motion. The two stepped inside.

They followed the butler down a short entry corridor of long, shallow stairs. Their guide walked in front with careful, proper steps; his very robe-tails expressed deportment in their modest swishes. Mr. Grey walked at the back, with steady mechanical rhythm, despite the vexing cough. Honeydew - walking down the steps between the two, with inquisitive glances here and there, and an excited loudness in her footsteps - seemed like an atom bouncing between metal plates.

In no time at all they arrived at the castle’s broad foyer. Everything in this room was about what Mr. Grey and Honeydew had expected from the outside. An enormous soap-dispenser in the middle-left floor space acted as a gurgling fountain. Over the middle-right, a chandelier-jar dangling from the ceiling on baling twine, from which a dozen giant fireflies lit the space. Toothpick torches burning beside pencap extinguishers on the walls added further brightness; though the light had the same parchment-graininess they’d noticed in the windows. Postage stamp portraits sat on wood chip shelves as decor, next to Tupperware lid plinths holding giant garden gnome statues. A bedraggled carpet made from an old scarf led across the foyer. It terminated near a split stairway. The stairs were under renovation, and surrounded by a scaffold of Lincoln logs.

Between the far end of the old scarf and the base of the Lincoln logs, the family waited. Earlier in the corridor, Honeydew had fallen back beside Mr. Grey and whispered, “I hope it’s no twisted setup of tiny people keeping regular humans as pets. Or vulgar lords served by gentleman servants.” But the three family members at the base of the steps looked like ordinary people to Mr. Grey. Except, he remembered, they were thumb-sized. By their dress, he could even guess the profession-names they took. The thatcher wore a suspendered cardigan robe and hooked her leathered hands over the buckles. The piper carried a pan-flute on a long leather strap at his neck. The baron wore a troubled brow and a mink fur mantle.

These visual impressions were Mr. Grey’s only introduction. As the butler led them across the ragged scarf, Mr. Grey noticed some hushed quarrel happening between the other three. At a distance, he saw concern in their faces. Closer up, they had cheeks that were drained, and eyes darkly marked. Mr. Grey thought these might be congenital traits.

The arguing family turned on the butler as he led Mr. Grey and Honeydew to the end of the scarf. The baron said, “Alas! Strangers from the woods. Neither castle nor kin is ready. Not burglars, I hope?”

“Not burglars, Baron,” answered the butler.

“We saw the bottle. We stopped to-” began Honeydew.

The baron ran both his hands through thinning, curly hair. “Alas! The bottle. Who left the bottle out? Thatcher?”

“Probably it was mason,” said the thatcher. She snapped the elastic bands of her suspenders and looked annoyed.

The three began to bicker, and even the stately butler was drawn into the bottle dispute. Mr. Grey and Honeydew looked at each other. Honeydew raised her voice and said, “We were hoping to find a doctor. This man’s sick.”

The baron turned to her with resolute sorrow and shook his head. “Alack. We cannot afford guests, loiterers, or help-seekers at this moment. Sorry, but no. Just no. You’ll have to leave.”

Mr. Grey said, “Perfectly fair. It is your castle; we are intruding. As we go, can you tell us if you’ve seen or heard of a girl named Jodee? Or if you know where the dragon lairs?”

The baron shook his head. He took Mr. Grey and Honeydew each by a shoulder and pushed them. Back across the worn-out scarf. Back past the soap dispenser trickling with a weak stream of brackish water. Back under the slow-strobing lights of the giant firefly jar. The baron said, “Do we look like we’ve time to care for princesses? Yours isn’t here. Best of luck. Safe travels.”

“Come on,” said Honeydew. She ground her heels against the baron’s push, though his hands were firm despite a thin frame. “We just need cologne; directions to any doctor you know. I can pay.”

Mr. Grey felt touched by Honeydew’s offer, but said, “I can afford any medicine you might supply, Mr. Baron.”

The baron barked a hollow laugh. He tried to push them on again. “Unless you’ve a spare Dragon’s Hoard™ you’re willing to part with, you shan’t turn our ill luck to good fortune.”

“Anything some pencil pushing or enchanting can solve?”

Honeydew shushed Mr. Grey, but the baron released their shoulders. The butler, the thatcher, and the piper looked on from the stair. The baron ran a hand through his hair again, and blew a long sigh. He looked out at Mr. Grey from doubtful, haunted eyes, and said, “I’ve no thought how we’ll be freed from this curse. Is this a challenge parchmentwork might mount? My mind says no, though my heart wishes it dearly.”

“What’s the challenge?”

“Finder. The family finder. More precisely, our cousin. He haunts our castle, skulking past moonlit windows and along the ancient halls. While we sleep, he drains us! Bleeds our coffers with exorbitant rates of interest.”

Mr. Grey glanced at Honeydew. “We know the type,” he said. Honeydew’s eyes lit in agreement.

“Your paltry treasures would solve nothing.” The baron put on a grimace of resigned pain. “Now there is no choice. Another loan! Another loan must we take.” He let out the last cry with a note of final doom. He called for the butler to bring him a pen, like a man at the block asking his headsman to ‘get it over with’.

Mr. Grey suddenly jerked an angled elbow to his face. He sneezed. The baron, the other family members, and Honeydew, jumped at the noise. The fireflies in the jar plinked and flashed. The trickling fountain water paused.

“Pardon me,” said Mr. Grey. He reached into a pocket, pulled out his pen, and offered it to the baron. “You can borrow mine. And I’ll push the parchment for you, if it helps.”

---

The baron knocked a second time. His light rapping made the massive, sardine-tin-lid door bong with a submarinish thud. “Finder slips from room to room,” said the baron by way of apology. He rubbed his hand where the door’s metal had bruised his soft skin. “It’s how he comes upon you. A tall, dark shape, swooping suddenly from the shadows of a room.”

Mr. Grey, Honeydew, and the baron stood outside the door. They waited, giving any occupants ample chance to respond. Mr. Grey stifled a cough. He looked, for the third time, up and down the long castle corridor. The curtained windows let small knives of moonshine into the corridor through their gaps. The light slashed across dusty tracts of stone floor and narrow carpet; occasionally it landed on a lumpy stress-ball chair, or a giant leaf which had slipped down one of the drainpipe chimneys. The baron’s thimble lantern did burn with a comfortable, ruddy warmth, but only a small radius. Outside its circle, the moonlight only made the shadows deeper.

Honeydew said, “Let me shoulder this finder guy. Kick him out the door, off the steps.”

The baron rubbed a hand on his neck. “Wicked means make wicked ends. We’ll not harm him out.”

“Admirable,” said Mr. Grey hoarsely. “It’ll be no trouble, I’m sure. Probably light pencil pushery.”

“Besides, Finder has the deed to the carriage now. Also besides, he is family.”

The hallway suddenly quaked. The floor vibrated under their feet. The sardine tin door rattled in its frame. The moon blades sawed across the floor. This lasted only a moment, and the three kept their feet by bracing on a dusty wall. Honeydew and Mr. Grey brushed themselves off while the baron explained, “A root, I expect.”

Honeydew said, “I’d hire a better driver.”

“There aren’t many stoats qualified.”

Mr. Grey tapped the wall beside the door and said, “Is this a room your finder normally sleeps in?” The bubbled-metal embossment of a fish on the door struck him as less-than-symbolic of findery.

As the baron opened his mouth to answer, the door opened a crack. The baron pushed it further and said, “Sometimes the judders knock the latch loose.”

The baron held his thimble light through the opening. The three peered inside into a disused bedroom. All the furniture - the armchair, the divan, the great four-poster - was upholstered in velvety glasses-wiping cloth. At first Mr. Grey thought the room must have belonged to the family arachnologist. Long strands of silky thread ran from rafters to floor, and overspread a desk of knotty wood. On closer inspection, he saw the strands were actually dental floss.

“Ah, now I do recall,” said the baron, again with the awkward note of an apology. “This would be our long-lost sister’s room. Fisher.”

“When did the fisher sister disappear?” asked Mr. Grey.

“Sister fisher’s cousin kissed her so Fisher wished herself away.”

They backed out, closed the door, and the baron led them on down the corridor. Even Mr. Grey’s footsteps went lightly over the dusty carpets. As they walked, the thimble lantern scattered shadows. They saw glimmering reflections when its light fell on a set of crossed sewing needles mounted beneath a button, and on a metal thermos lid serving as a coffee table. Sometimes the lantern reflected farther down the hall, as two not-so-tiny dots of light off in the blackness. This led Mr. Grey to ask, “Are your family the only residents in the castle?”

Baron nodded. “There are some dog-sized rats. Sometimes the cellar’s infested with rat-sized spiders. But the family shrew keeps the latter population down. The light keeps the former away.”

Mr. Grey and Honeydew each took a toothpick torch from the wall. They lit their picks on the lantern, and carried them for the rest of the journey.

The baron stopped before several other doors, but shook his head at each. They walked quietly for a time before finally arriving at a door he thought the finder might be behind. The door was one smooth piece of slate, roughly the size of a paving stone. It stood out from the mortared walls, but lacked hinge or handle. The baron gave it two soft knocks. They heard the echoes of these knocks roll around the room inside; as though some vast extraplanar cavern lay beyond this portal.

The baron said, “Once upon a time, this was the castle founder’s room. I’ve sat inside betimes, reflecting on the pedigree of my family, and been ambushed by our cousin. I know it to be one of his haunts.”

Mr. Grey and Honeydew had been looking down the hall and holding their torches out to extend the light. Mr. Grey noticed the baron patting the door. He had a nostalgic shine in his eyes as he spoke of the past. Mr. Grey said, “It’s an imposing piece of slate.”

“A chip off the foundation block,” explained the baron. “Founder - my grandfather - set the first stone on the carriage. He enchanted the same bottle that shrank you.”

“A grand enchanter. Was he from Stone-Head Town?”

“He came from your homeland, you know! From Starharbor.”

“He must have applied for long-term Dreamland residency.”

Honeydew’s torch drooped as the dialogue drew her in. She asked, “What part of Dreamland attracted him? Can anyone here build their own castle?”

“I’ll tell you the truth, our ancestor was a strange man. He ‘left Starharbor’ more than he ‘came to Dreamland’. Not with any visa or parchmentwork. Long, long ago - many ages now - before the king was king, even before the queen was queen, our ancestor lived in Starharbor. And he loathed the city. Not for its heavy jellyfalls. Not for its dragon trams. Not for its stoop dwellers. I heard him often enough complain of those elements, but not for them did he hate Starharbor. He hated Starharbor for its questions.

“Often I heard my grandfather rant of the people who would approach him, no by-your-leaves, and ask him about one thing or another. They asked him what he thought of the new farm law. They asked for his opinion on dragon-power. They wanted to know if he agreed with the wheelhouse age restrictions. ‘How was I to say what should or should-not be?!’ he’d scream.

“One day he goes and wishes himself away from it all. He wished to ‘Secede from people.’ No sooner wished than done. He appeared under Dreamland’s moony wood. He still felt there were one or two people too many. He built himself a nice, tiny house, shrank himself to an appropriate, tiny man, and shut himself inside. And the mouth of the man who told this tale is still warm.”

The baron finished and crossed his arms, pleased to relate his genealogy. Honeydew had checked out part way through and continued watching the corridor for giant rats. Mr. Grey, however, had listened patiently. He said, “I’d like to see the room. I wonder how it matches the legend.”

The baron gave the heavy door a willing shove. It swung open with a coffin-lid grate. He held his thimble-lantern high and let the light glide inside.

No one lurked behind the door. Mr. Grey saw, in the space beyond - empty but for its plain metal desk, and cold spring bed, and hard brick walls - an exact replica of a workers’ prison cell.

The castle shuddered as the carriage wheels rolled over Dreamland’s furrowed woodland floor. Mr. Grey coughed and steadied himself on the cell’s threshold. The baron said, “V-v-verily, the ride’s never this rough!”

When the shudder passed, Mr. Grey stepped away from the door. He pulled his anchor shawl over his mouth and coughed again, then brought it down and said, “Let’s check a different room.”

They stalked the dreary castle halls for many moments. The baron couldn’t find a door he thought the finder might lie behind. Their guide became garrulous after his founder story, and narrated the residents and purposes of many other doors they passed. When they came to a door made from a hand mirror - the same as Honeydew’s at normal size - the baron told them it belonged to the castle stylist. He rushed them past, though Honeydew expressed interest in meeting that member of the family. When they walked by the sole of an old boot, the baron explained how that door, “-led to the kennel, and was home to the family hounds.” They heard high-pitched, primeval, beastly howling beyond the treaded portal. Mr. Grey asked if the animals were dogs. “No, wolves. No fear. We gave them a bonus dose of the enchanting bottle. They’re the size of terriers.”

They were passing through one of the window light blades - the wolves’ howling long-faded in the corridors behind - when Honeydew stopped. She snapped shut her mirror, spun on Mr. Grey and the baron, and said, “What about a scheme?”

“A scheme?” asked the baron.

“To do what?” asked Mr. Grey.

“For this finder.” Honeydew narrowed her eyes in excitement and steepled her fingers in front of her. “I pretend to be a traveling wheelwoman. Mr. Grey pretends he’s lost a bunch of treasure to me. We reel this finder with easy wins, get him to bet the deed, then give him the bad spin.”

The baron gave a somber shake of the head. “Our cousin never plays at wheels. He calls them ‘bewitching tools’.”

Honeydew turned to Mr. Grey for his opinion. Mr. Grey seemed to have not heard. He had, in fact, been thinking of the merchant they’d met in Stone-Head town. He thought of how Jodee had left that man better. Had Jodee schemed, he wondered?

“Well?” prompted Honeydew.

“I doubt we need anything elaborate,” said Mr. Grey. He turned to the baron. “By the way, have you thought of my question? Back in the entry hall?”

The baron scratched his curly hair. “Be pleased to remind me.”

“Have you, by chance, had a girl named Jodee on your stoop? Dragon engine robe. Carries an alwayslush sapling.”

“It doesn’t light any candles… We had a forest of those tiny alwayslushs in the courtyard once. We had to chop them up for plastic knives and forks. We were hosting a feast for a visiting ant colony.”

“Oh well. We’ll just have to set out right-” Mr. Grey coughed, “-right away once we’re done here.”

The baron looked at a pair of matching picture frame doors, but shook his head. He said, “We’ve got to find Finder first. You know the tale of the nail and horseshoe?”

Honeydew said, “You’re starting to sound Glory-Days-ey. Skip to the moral.”

“Hasten slowly.”

The baron used the impetus of another shudder in the castle to get them moving. He held his thimble forth and let its sunset-on-a-corn-field glow lead them through the dark. They walked past doors made from every imaginable variety of flat, shrunken object: holiday cards, kitchen scales, sunglasses, wallets, books, pickleball paddles, and one door made from a folding silk-fan patterned in Siamese cats.

As they walked, Honeydew brought the conversation back to future plans. She looked at Mr. Grey and said, “We should ride this castle for a spell.”

“I thought we agreed to find Jodee as fast as possible,” said Mr. Grey.

“Did we?”

Mr. Grey coughed. “In any case, loitering here won’t help.”

“Why not? The castle moves. You can post up at the windows. And if she hasn’t ridden the castle yet, she might drop in.”

The baron’s expression turned uncomfortable. Mr. Grey said, “Besides, it’s discourteous to impose on the family,” Honeydew said nothing and flicked her hand-mirror open.

At that moment they were walking by a door inconspicuously recessed into the wall. The baron hadn’t even noticed it, possibly because it was ordinary wood. The door’s only unique feature was its coffin-lid shape. As Honeydew’s mirror clicked open, the door swung suddenly wide, as if she’d released its lock by catching the reflection. The three stumbled back from the blast of fetid, stale air that wafted from an inky interior. The baron raised his thimble, and a pale arm shot from the dark in a shielding gesture. Behind the arm, a pale face crept from the gloom.

The finder cousin shared his family’s gaunt features, but in him they were excessively pronounced. His eyes were like boreholes dug into his face, with little bloodshot gems at the bottoms, and his pronounced cheekbones might have cut stone. The finder hunched, and furrowed his milky eyebrows at them. In an airy voice like The Wind through a tunnel, he said, “Baronnnnn… come for another loan?”

The baron gave Mr. Grey a pitiable look of terror. He shrank from his cousin. Honeydew took an offensive step forward, but Mr. Grey beat her to the front. He stepped mechanically up and said, “Actually, I’d like to discuss your loans. Perhaps we could push some pencils, if you don’t object. But I forget my manners, my name is Mr. Grey.”

Mr. Grey held his arm at a 90-degree angle for a shake. The finder brought his wet, pale fingers down around Mr. Grey’s cold, stony ones, and shook. He smiled. “Mr. Greyyyyyy…” The finder pulled Mr. Grey into the room. The coffin door slammed shut.

Honeydew and the baron stood awkwardly next to each other outside. Honeydew shifted from foot-to-foot. She said, “That specter cousin of yours better not have some weird fetish.”

“No,” said the baron. “The family witch carries the fetishes.”

A scanty number of moments passed. Honeydew clicked to show her patience breaking. She reached to yank the door open, when it swung before her, rapping her hand. She stepped back and brought her lips to suck the bruised knuckles. Mr. Grey emerged, looking the same as before. He noticed Honeydew’s state and said, “Sorry. I should have given warning. Completely my fault.”

Honeydew took the hand away from her mouth and waved it dismissively. “Well?” she asked.

“Did you get our deed?” asked the baron.

Mr. Grey handed a long, rolled scroll to the baron; the castle deed. The baron took it in his shaking hands. He collapsed to his knees and wept for joy. Behind Mr. Grey, the finder cousin loomed in the dark doorway. He made a low bow, and said, “A pleasurrrrrre, Mr. Greyyyyy.” Then the finder sealed the coffin door.

“How’d you do it?” asked Honeydew; half-bewildered, half-suspicious.

“Just some run-of-the-mill pushery,” said Mr. Grey. He coughed then, a long fit, which seemed as if it must chisel the very stone off his lungs. When it finally ended he said, “Now… I would actually very much like some medicine… now…”

---

The family minion pulled a leather strap tight, fastening Mr. Grey’s skull against the headrest of a wheelchair. Mr. Grey pushed his head, his torso, his limbs. All to no avail. He was immobilized; fixed into position on the wheeled seat of stringy leather and rusted metal; held in his customary, stiff state by force.

Mr. Grey’s eyes still moved. They rolled - under tired lids and over slight bags - with the usual deliberate arc. They were the only part of his body showing signs of existence; like cut-out eye holes in a framed wall portrait, following the people who walk by.

Mr. Grey’s eyes rolled to the family minion, who had turned from the chair and shuffled toward the door. Mr. Grey’s mouth moved then, which helped his eyes break the sculpted look. In a nasally voice he said, “Excuse me, Mr. Minion?”

The hunched, oily-haired, warty man in the coal-dark cardigan-apron-robe, turned on Mr. Grey with an annoyed sneer. He said, “Hate that name.”

“Apologies, you were introduced as such. How should I address you?”

The family minion’s sneer changed to a confused frown. He hadn’t having expected the question. “It’s what I’m always called. Use it till I think of something finer.”

“I shall,” The minion shuffled for the door again. Mr. Grey added, “I wanted to know if we might do this operation without the wheelchair?”

“Without the chair?”

“I could hold still if that’s called for.”

The minion wagged his greasy hair. “Must be strapped in for cologne treatment. Must be strapped in; that’s the order.” Before Mr. Grey or Honeydew could argue the hunched man shuffled quickly out of the room. He slammed the table-coaster door closed.

Honeydew snapped her mirror shut and returned it to her pocket. She leaned forward on her coffee mug chair. “This better be worth our cost.” Her voice reverberated off the waiting room’s naked brick and made the single toothpick torch flicker.

Mr. Grey’s arm strained pointlessly against the leather strap as he reached instinctively for his ticker. His eyes flicked a quick angle to Honeydew and he said, “I don’t think we can put a price on wellness.”

“I mean these people got lucky, having a pair like us around. The perfect fix for their issue. Some parchment shuffling, and the whole problem’s solved.”

Mr. Grey’s lids settled lower, and his eyes moved with a slower, easier rotation back to the door. “A fair point. I hope it’s a quick treatment.”

As Mr. Grey settled his eyes against the round wooden coaster, it flew open and banged on the stone wall. Honeydew darted quickly up; not as quickly as the tall woman who’d opened the door darted in. Honeydew set her shoulders defensively. The newcomer only shook a massive pile of curly hair - plums on a silver serving dish - and laughed like The Wind in a field of windmill flowers.

Mr. Grey sat immobile through the surprising entrance. His arms wanted to fold themselves over his chest; they strained unconsciously against the leather straps with a creaking noise. He made up for his forced stillness with the motion of his eyes. He glanced up and down the new family member. Along with the tangle of hair that lay like a great glob of moss on her scalp, she wore a sleek, sealskin cardigan robe with a checkered pattern of neon lines and silver squares, as well as a pair of bent spectacles with one lens knocked out, so that one eye looked larger than the other.

Mr. Grey cleared his raw throat - the swallowing motion at his neck was his only kind, except for that of his eyes - and said, “You must be the family stylist?”

The tall woman laughed again. She took one big stride over to Mr. Grey and patted his knee. “You’ve guessed me, so now I must grant you your healing wish.” She winked at Honeydew with her smaller, un-lensed eye and added, “Though ask any of my family, and they’ll put the word ‘mad’ before my title.”

“Unfounded, I’m sure,” said Mr. Grey.

“I like to have fun. Now, rumor in the walls is that someone’s been scent-mauled? Needs treatment?” She flicked a finger back and forth between Mr. Grey and Honeydew and put on a confused expression, pretending not to know which of the two was her client. Then she threw back her head, and the renewed laughter made her hair bob.

“I’m the one who seems to have got on the bad side of a smell. I wouldn’t call it mauling, per se.”

“Only bewitching you, my brave little volunteer.” The stylist slapped his knee again. “Odor mauling or nasal scratch, it makes no difference.”

“Your treatment’s generally applicable then?”

“You get a free premium package: exfoliating and conditioning, full cologne daub, hot towel treatment. You’ll leave this castle smelling cleaner than before you existed.”

Honeydew dropped her shoulders and gradually warmed to the stylist. She’d watched the woman’s hair bounce with an appreciative jealousy, and listened to the service description with the same. Now Honeydew broke in with, “This sounds like fair payment. Can you perfume me too?”

“Before we come to de-scenting, first things first; the iodine scrub.”

“On second thought,” said Honeydew, “Best not be greedy.”

“To the salon!”

The stylist twirled on a pair of emerald heels, grabbed the toothpick torch set on the wall by the door, and pulled. The floor of the room spun; not with one wall and into an adjacent room; but downward at an angle, with a rapid corkscrewing motion. Honeydew crouched to steady herself. The doctor’s eyes spun dizzily through twist, but her tall body stood steady. Mr. Grey, of course, sat.

When their rotating floor finally thudded to a stop, the three could look back along the angular tunnel they’d descended from the waiting room. Turning the other way, they saw a sparingly-used, laboratory-like vault in some distant wing of the carriage castle. The walls curved up and away. Instead of ending in a shadowy, raftered, inverted cone, the ceiling terminated as a circular looking-glass. Through the glass they saw Dreamland’s canopy rolling by; a dark sheet of leaves and branches, meteored by corns and apples and gourds, at times cut by shafts of moonlight and starlight. The occasional light shafts tumbled through the glass and into the laboratory; sometimes stopping on a crossbeam or the thick rings of a fine necklace-chain; sometimes passing through a network of fixed contact lenses and refracting, until they scattered to ephemeral spots of light.

One of the light spots glittered momentarily off a giant China plate, recessed into the floor and edged with gold filigree. The stylist snapped her fingers and said, “If we’d only set out six moments quicker.” Another light spot struck a row of bottle-lid buckets leaning against the far wall. The buckets held a collection of sludgy unguents.

The stylist rolled Mr. Grey to a squeaking halt before the row of substances. She walked with long strides over to a giant q-tip hanging from a pair of metal hooks. This instrument she brought to the buckets, dunked it into a bottle lid, and drew back the wet tip, dripping with liquid sunset. “Now, hold still,” joked the stylist. She proceeded to batter Mr. Grey, robe, shawl, and all, with iodine.

While the stylist smacked Mr. Grey’s limbs and chest, he let his eyes wander the floor. As far as they could wander anyway, without turning his head. He watched occasional moonlight beams, reflected down through the web of contact lenses, flash across the tiled floor. Sometimes they fell on piles of old mouse skin robes, or shelves of tiny crystal beakers, or tables bearing a collection of tiny combs, tweezers, and other grooming tools. Whenever the carriage rattled over the forest roots, the lenses and the beams and the necklace chains would chink and clatter together like booming thunder.

The stylist caught Mr. Grey straining to see the gold-filigree China dish, recessed into the floor and holding a layer of foggy fluid. She said, “Trying for a sneak-peak?”

Mr. Grey said, “How exactly does the de-scenting work?”

“After you’re iodine primed, I roll you into the gold pool. Not all gold of course; we haven’t the treasure. But a little gold helps. Gold stimulates the heart, or so I’m told.”

Honeydew nodded. Mr. Grey asked, “And then?”

“Then we roll you into the pool. And wait. Wait, till the canopy parts and that perfect fragment of the blessed moon shines through the boughs. Wait, till that fragment strikes the lenses at the right moment; condensing - hardening! - to a beam of hot night-glow. Wait, till the beam strikes where you sit at the pool’s center. And wait just one tock more, till all odor illness radiates off you, and the cologne crystallizes over your skin. Then the treatment will be a success; your skin, left with only the zero-scent!”

“I’ve never heard of this treatment,” said Honeydew.

“It’s one I’ve cooked up myself,” said the stylist. She gave a proud, forceful push of the swab into Mr. Grey’s chest.

Mr. Grey caught his breath and asked, “Could you heal anyone this way?”

“Not yet. It’s a developing style. Right now the moonlight only cauterizes mild cases.”

Honeydew added an emphatic click to every other word the stylist said. She planted her hands on her hips, looked approvingly at the dangling network of lenses and chains, and said, “What a slew of amenities in this castle. Free transport, free medicine. Plenty of space, plenty of rooms. Customized perfumes whenever you want. Think how useful we could be,” she turned to Mr. Grey, “if we stuck around. You’d push pencils for the family, instead of that finder. I’d work up my own treasure scheme. It’s a perfect fit.”

The stylist stopped swabbing Mr. Grey as Honeydew spoke. She resumed, slowly, and said, “So unfortunate, our having just been delivered from Debt’s specter. Otherwise we’d love company. But we’ll be trying frugal living for the next few eons.”

“That’s the thing, we’d pay our way in.”

“We’re also a private bunch, this family.”

The web of lenses thundered as the carriage rolled over another root. Mr. Grey said, “Once this treatment’s complete we’ll get out of your hair.”

The stylist finished painting almost every atom of Mr. Grey’s stone surface in iodine. She left only his face clear, giving him the appearance of some swan-racing team’s mascot-eggplant. The stylist set the wet end of the swab back into the iodine bucket-cap. She swooped behind Mr. Grey’s chair and jerked him around to face the China-pool. With a rusty metal screeching from the wheels, she shoved him toward the shallow basin. Just before Mr. Grey pitched over the gilded brim, down the shallow slope, and into the foggy brine, she brought him to a hard stop at the edge.

Then they waited for the moon to strike.

Honeydew said, “We left our ladder and suitcases back where we boarded. It’d be rude, tossing us to the underbrush without our stuff.”

Mr. Grey couldn’t speak. He had to sneeze again, and fought it back since he couldn’t cover his nose. The stylist watched the lenses above, and nearly shoved Mr. Grey prematurely when a small rumble sent a moonbeam flashing close to the pool. She said, “Your ladder, gone? Alas. But eureka! I have the solution already. We have ladders from the grand stair repair. We can spare one for your travels.”

“And our luggage?”

“Your luggage, too? Alas. But eureka again! What if I offered some robes of my own? No, no, too tall. Perhaps my brother Piper’s… No, no, too short.”

“It’s not right anyway. Losing us our stuff. You’d owe us at least some riding time in your cushy keep.”

“I’ve got it! I’ll have Minion run up to the tallest turret of the castle when we’re finished. He can order the driver to turn around.”

Mr. Grey couldn’t see Honeydew’s face, but the sharp click expressed her disappointment succinctly. She said, “Fine. I guess that works.”

The stylist set her arm atop Mr. Grey’s head and leaned on him. He saw her other hand, with long, painted nails, waving expressively. She said, “We can’t have traveled far. You’ll have your stuff back betimes breakfast.”

Mr. Grey finally got a handle on his sneeze. He bottled it, saved it for later, and said, “Our thanks for the detour. Also, how will we return to normal size? Is there another potion?”

“There’s no going back. You exist as thumblings from now on.”

The carriage must have turned up a smooth and uphill patch of ground at that moment; the room around Mr. Grey tilted, and fell very still.

Then the stylist grabbed Mr. Grey by the shoulders and shook him in the wheelchair. “Only jesting! We’ve got bottles for growing and shrinking.”

“That’s something at least,” said Honeydew.

The perfect spear of moonlight suddenly struck the looking glass in the ceiling. It rebounded and condensed in an angular knot through the system of contact-lenses. The concentrated beam terminated as a hot, ghostlight laser on the surface of the milky pool. Behind Mr. Grey the stylist cackled and shoved. Mr. Grey’s wheelchair screeched into the bright pool. The room flashed with light, as moon met iodine and water. Honeydew and the stylist shielded their eyes.

For a moment, the room blinded all with its radiance.

Then the carriage rattled over a root, the lenses thundered, and the flash ended. The room darkened. Honeydew and the stylist dropped their hands.

Mr. Grey stood up in the shallow pool, the metal and leather fastenings of the wheelchair having exploded open. All the iodine had vanished from his robe and skin also, leaving him grey as when he first left Starharbor. He brought the back of his hand to his nose and sniffed. He took a few deep breaths. The sneeze he’d saved for later was gone.

“How do you feel,” asked Honeydew. She made a tiny, uncertain click.

Mr. Grey turned to her and the stylist. He wore the old granite - almost promethean - look on his face. He raised a thumb, and said, “Ready to depart.”