Chapter 5 - Reaping
Mr. Grey and Honeydew floated, legless - a pair of torsos and heads - through grass. The silky tassels rustled in cold zephyrs left in the location by The Wind; the tall plants tickled their wrists. Around them, taller shapes sprung up from the wavey swarth. Not the food-laden, softwood trees they’d left at this clearing’s edge. These shapes were rows and rows and rows of high, triangular tents; a camp like a shark’s mouth, emerging from the grassy sea, opened wide, stopped mid-swallow.
The tents snapped unnaturally - like whipping flagellants - in the light breeze. Under the moon their leather sides were glossy and bright. By this dim light, not a soul had Mr. Grey or Honeydew seen. The two had noticed a few people-shapes when they first approached the camp. After several polite greetings met no response, Mr. Grey had discovered they were scarecrows.
Mr. Grey looked at Honeydew. “Should we knock on the leather?” he asked.
“Strike a candle,” suggested Honeydew. ” Show that we’re here.”
Neither of them jumped to action. They swayed with the grass. Hunger and Fatigue - siblings of rank in Suffering’s court - left both weak.
Around them, the scarecrows groaned. In their weary ears, the noise from the people of straw and wood sounded like insane, mocking laughter.
Mr. Grey said, “Maybe… maybe we just move on. I guess… I don’t know.”
Honeydew only nodded tiredly. Then her voice seemed to catch up. “I doubt there’s food here.”
“Maybe no one eats in dreams.”
Butter-light flared up in the dark with a whoosh as a lantern suddenly shone. The two shielded their eyes. The light transformed the field’s whole atmosphere. First, with long shadows thrown from the tents and scarecrows, which slithered on the wavy grass. Second, with whispers, and the swishing of parting tent flaps. Third, with people.
The pair’s eyes watered at their first bright glow since the barn dance. Mr. Grey and Honeydew saw, also, their first community since that same place. If not for the downturned mouths, and wrinkled eyes, and grim jaws worn on every face; if not for the collection of scythes, rakes, spades, and hoes - rusty iron - carried by these rural folk; if not for the hair curlers of suspicious ivory twisting every keratin strand on every spotted head; if not for these things, Mr. Grey and Honeydew might have felt relieved. But since the community did have those aspects, Mr. Grey and Honeydew tensed.
“The iron is hot,” came a matronly old wail from the rear of the crowd. Shushes followed.
One woman with leathered hands and a garish, pale scar cleaving her upper lip stepped forward. The backlight of the lantern made her look more sullen still. She pointed her lantern and her scar at the two strangers, and said, “Who’re these, then?”
Mr. Grey brought his hand up, coughed into it, reached into the pocket where he used to keep their visa, remembered it was gone, reached for his ticker, stopped himself, loosened the collar of his anchor shawl, and finally, after this restless rove of his dry hand, extended it out before him for a shake. He said, “Good evening. My name is Mr. Grey. This is Honeydew. A pleasure, I’m sure, miss…?”
“What’re you’s here for?”
“We’ve- Well we’ve had very little rest and not enough food.”
“The board is set,” came the old wail again from the back. This time the other rustics made no sound, only the tall grass susurrated. The curler-ed crowd drew a tight circle around the duo, cutting off avenues of escape.
Honeydew’s stomach growled. In contradiction to it she said, “We’ll move on. No need to interrogate.” She raised her shoulders in a half-hearted point at the circling group.
Mr. Grey said, “It’s been so long, though, since we ate. If you could spare just a snack.” Honeydew pinched his elbow, but he went on, “we’d be pleased to pay.”
Another of the tent dwellers - a man with a coarse unibrow, and a matching tweed hat and cardigan-robe - said, “How’d ye’ cross the wood?”
“We walked. We did ride a kettle for a short bit. And a swan.”
“Where’s yer pot an’ bird now?” asked a woman with horn-rimmed curler, standing on tiptoe at the back of the crowd.
“The former’s beached, miss. And the latter’s out of commission.”
“An’ who’s yer lordship?” asked the woman with the lip scar. She prodded him with a pitchfork; the weapon proving less harmful and slightly-less intimidating for every prong being bent into a U.
“Pardon, can you clarify? Are you asking who I am, in a rustic way? Or are you asking after my liege?”
“The second.”
“I work in the Change of Address Department. That’s in Starharbor under King’s Law.” There were whispers. Mr. Grey added, “I do understand there’s some regency dispute here in Dreamland.”
The tent people, despite his answer, continued to whisper. At each question they’d edged closer, so that they now formed a tight ring around Mr. Grey and Honeydew. Honeydew turned shoulderier at each shuffle forward. She flicked her worn, narrow, yet alert eyes side to side; daring any one of them to make a hostile move. Other lanterns had flared among the crowd by this point. Light glinted off the shiny curlers on every head, so that each scalp seemed to sport sets of spare, glimmering eyes within its nest of hair.
Mr. Grey reached for his chest pocket to check his ticker while they whispered. The dozen nearest faces flicked toward him. He dropped his hand to his side and held still.
One of the crows roosting unconcernedly atop the creaking scarecrows mistook his inaction for invitation. With a dark feather flutter and a caw, the bird of ill omen perched on Mr. Grey’s head. The yokels took it at face-value. They gripped their tools in pale hands. The garish scar of the one woman stood bright, as though fresh, on her taut face. The crowd edged closer.
The same old voice from the back cried, “The water is hissing!”
Mr. Grey, by the increased light and adjustment of his eyes, saw a suspicious hole in the leather at the base of one of the tents. A foot-shaped hole. A hole, much like the hole Jodee Coats had kicked into his cubicle.
The ring closed. Mr. Grey plucked up his will and said, “We actually came here after someone. A girl named Jodee Coats. I think you might have met her.” But the ring of bent pitchforks and glinting curlers and grim faces only constricted.
One old man stared at Honeydew. He dropped his jaw, as if in wonder, showing a set of crooked teeth. He reached a hand to touch Honeydew’s uncurled hair. She jabbed her right shoulder hard into the hand. The old man drew it back with a hiss. Mr. Grey said, “Please, we don’t mean to trespass. We’re here on a visa.”
A familiar, ghastly voice broke suddenly through the crowd. “Another visa bearer. I dare not have dreamed we would ever discover a second such fellow.”
Another familiar voice, also ghastly but feminine, said, “But my love, look! It’s the very same Honeydew and Mr. Grey.”
Floating through - yes, through - the crowd, Mr. Grey saw the spectral shapes of Wilson and Anna McDourr. When their eyes met Mr. Grey and Honeydew’s, the couple looked uncomfortable. Honeydew also turned more anxious than ever; she seemed ready to spring on the nearest tent-person.
Mr. Grey thought he saw a glimmer of opportunity. He looked from sullen face to sullen face - from curler to curler - and pleaded. “Please, we know these ghosts. I mean poltergeists. Please, let them vouch for our identity - our good intentions - if they’re friends of yours. We’ll pay, or play music, or… anything. Please, don’t, don’t boil us. Or cut us on a board. Or roast us on a grill.”
The faces twisted. Not ‘twisted with rage’. Not twisted with disgust, or mistrust. The mouths in the crowd flickered with held-back smiles. Every set of eyes crinkled at the corners. Almost at once the whole group - except for the McDourr’s, Mr. Grey, and Honeydew - burst with laughter.
“Sorry about that feller,” said the woman with the garish lip. “Couldn’t resist some practical jokin’.”
The people began tossing their curlers into collective buckets. The woman with the horn-rimmed ones said, “You two seem decent sort. And what tired eyes ye’ve got. Put yer feet up, n’ have a kip.”
“And don’t worry none about food,” said the man in the tweed hat and robe. He walked over to one of the triangle tents. “We got vittle-gatherin’ down to an art.”
He pulled away the leather of the tent and revealed the support structure underneath.
A ladder.
The wicker bench under Honeydew creaked as she leaned toward Mr. Grey. She whispered, “A tourist could get used to this treatment.” She struck him a friendly elbow to the ribs, winked unsubtly, and bit on a shiny, crunchy, lipsticky apple.
Mr. Grey said, “I’m glad you’re glad. Having a bite to eat makes for a nice change.” He plucked a kernel from his own pewter plate of loose corn. He nibbled, and cast a pensive eye at his dish.
At a sudden thought Mr. Grey leaned over the round wicker table. He waved a hand to get the attention of a man sitting a few seats to his left on the huge picnic-ring. The man wore a look of hard labor, and a curling, oiled mustache. “Excuse me Mr…?”
“What’s that m’boy?” asked the man. He cupped his ear. “Need the pie passed?”
The mustached-man reached for one of the dishes; a quarter of pie, made of miniscule pumpkins pressed together in a cornmeal crust, sticky with tree syrup. Mr. Grey raised a hand to stop the man. “No, thank you sir. Do we owe you harvesters anything for the ladder?”
Honeydew clicked her displeasure on Mr. Grey’s other side. But the man wrinkled his eyes and twisted his mustache in a friendly way. He flicked a leathern hand up from the table, as though tossing the worry into the lantern-lit night. “The ladder’s yers to keep.”
“We don’t want to leech off your people.”
“Never mind it, Master. We’ve ladders aplenty. An’ if we hadn’t? Why, chance’d put ‘em in our path. Or she wouldn’t. Tis the whims o’ the woods. A feller can’t fix his dreams.”
Wilson and Anna McDourr sat adjacent to Mr. Grey. The poltergeists had remained quiet throughout the exchange, but shared side-eyes with each other. At the harvester’s last word Wilson set down his cup of bubbly cider. Anna took her cue and dropped her plate of apple slices, which tumbled into a Granny Smith pentagram. The ghosts floated in unison from the round table. The lanterns - swaying from the widow’s peaks of the tents, and turning the tall grass around the picnic meal into blades of Dijon, butterscotch, and fire - passed through the ghosts too. The light gave them a look like watered milk. The pair bowed stiffly to the company. Wilson said, “Though this grand feast has diverted us for a brief happily-partial-after, the Mcdourr’s - Anna and myself - cannot remain.”
“We’re sorry to leave your company,” added Anna.
“Sorry, my love?”
“Ah, too right is Wilson. What we mean is, it grieves us terribly.”
“A cruel shame we could not share more adventures, Mr. Grey, Ms. Honeydew, as we did once upon the elevated frontage of our literary abode.”
“You’re fascinating guests. Wilson and myself envy the harvesters the pleasure.”
Mr. Grey turned and shook their hands as best he could. He assured them it was quite alright, and wished them well in their travel. Honeydew focused on her apple. The harvesters seemed indifferent to the spirits’ departure.
Just as the McDourrs were floating to go, however, an old voice called out. The same old voice which had called out the meal preparations earlier at their hazing.
“Course three comes. Apple-fetters; gourdian-knots.”
Huge platters of linked apple-rounds and tangled balls of roasted, stringy pumpkin came forth on long leather stretchers and lighted at the ends of the table. The assembled feasters watched the food, paying no mind to the ghosts. But Wilson and Anna McDourr seemed to mistake the announcement as a request for their continued presence. They felt it awkward to leave now, despite having announced the intention. Wilson said, “It is only decorous that we remain for one course further.”
“My love, this is a royal company!” said Anna.
“Dear, I make no contrary statement.”
“Let’s do our share of the entertainment. We’ll strike a tune.”
The poltergeists joined the accordion-squeezing notes of the harvesters’ enchanter with their own song. Anna pulled a spectral theremin from the ether and waved her hands over it, while Wilson sang in a high, Victorian-child falsetto.
The McDourr’s music added a new tone to the squeezing accordion soundtrack of the table feast. Not an unhappy tone, or an evil tone. It introduced some small melancholy to the convivial air; like a smile which is sad. The harvesters still chatted in their merry ring, around the single, sprawling, round wicker-table. At the table’s middle, where platters were accidentally shoved beyond the reach of mortal and spectral feasters, the crows took their own share of the feast, with many caws of approval. No one minded the birds, and Mr. Grey felt grateful; the food kept them off his shoulder. The lanterns carried on dropping light and warmth over the gathering. Warmer still, for the absence of The Old Wind. For the first time since coming to Dreamland, Mr. Grey forgot the chill of her breezes on his neck. The setting was, all-told, cozy.
As the McDourrs fell into song, Honeydew lowered her hackles. She picked a sticky apple from a nearby plate and wafted it at Mr. Grey. She said, “Sweeter than corn. More crunch than a pumpkin. Try one.”
Mr. Grey shook his head. “I’m already full on this feast. I wonder why they made so many courses.”
“These harvesters know their hosting game.”
“Very kind folk once you get to know them. And they’ve made food a non-issue for the rest of our trip. It seems like a sturdy ladder they’ve gifted.”
Honeydew’s brow furrowed. She let the sticky apple peel from her hand and plop onto her plate. “We don’t have to charge right back to the shaded woods.”
“But this ladder solves so many problems, not just food. We can scout from above when we’re seeking Jodee.”
“Other plan: we stick with these roamers for a spell. Sleep under their ladder-tents. Maybe drop by the barn again, if they wander that way.”
“The existence appeals?”
“We don’t know anything about their existence. Except they’re good hosts. You might even find some pencil pushing if we stick with this crowd.”
Mr. Grey leaned across the space the ghosts had vacated to play their song. The harvester woman across it wore a cardigan-robe patterned in lemon-boughs. In the pauses of the ghostly song, Mr. Grey exchanged a polite hello with her. He asked if she could tell them what it was like to lodge in the camp.
“None has a fixed dwelling,” she said with a happy air. “We reside in the shady woodlands; soft-swelling banks amid meadows kept fresh with steam are our habitation.”
Mr. Grey thanked her, and turned back to Honeydew. He said, “That sounds pleasant.”
“Pleasant? It sounds radiant!”
“It doesn’t seem very majestic though. All day - or night, rather - under trees and tents.”
“You don’t know that. You don’t know what might cross your wandering course.”
Mr. Grey turned to the McDourr’s. The last notes of Wilson’s angelic voice and Anna’s wailing theremin were just then warbling away into the woods. Mr. Grey said, “Excuse me McDourrs. I’ve a question.”
“Y-yes, Mr. Grey?” asked Anna with a stutter.
“Is a map needed for the full Dreamland experience? Or could we simply wander?”
“Sir, there are marvels to be caught walking below the boughs,” said Mr. McDourr. “There are plentiful scenes of the attention-taking variety. Ancient raths, and giant steps, and entire fields of mushroom circles lie within the means of your feet.”
“But is it the proper place to raise a family?” asked Anna. “That’s the question I ask. Is it right to put a child in that environment? Where a terrible dragon, or vicious wolf, or overbearing ogre, might pop out from any corner, and plop a youngling into its jaws?”
“Dear, I see no contradiction, and thus, no need for contrariety. I concur with the whole of my heart; Dreamland is not a place for a young boy.”
“Or a girl.”
“Or a girl, I submit. I was only diverting — well, more directing - Mr. Grey’s considerations of the points-of-interest.”
Honeydew kept her eyes fixed on the grass where the McDourr’s stood during their dialogue, rather than their faces. When the poltergeists fell quiet, she shook a distracted look from her oil eyes, narrowed them on Mr. Grey, and said, “These harvesters get around. They’ve probably seen cooler stuff than us. Greater than anything I’ve seen with our visa; in Glory Days, or Wine Medo, or even at the archtree, or the barn.”
Anna McDourr made a sudden show of reaching her hand toward the table and waving it back and forth through her cup. She laughed her distant-sounding laugh, patted one of the stitched rocking-chairs on the robe over her belly, and said, “What a marvel! I’ve eaten so much, not a glass can I touch!”
Wilson added, “My condition is the same. And I would also appreciate the opportunity of removing the excess hair from my cheeks before our departure.”
“Then husband, let us bid this gathering adieu.”
The Harvesters and Mr. Grey all waved farewell. No one begrudged the ghosts their departure. As they were turning around, the old cook called out the next stage in the meal. “Course four comes. Cornflake-and-apple tarts; apple-jelly over corn-bread.”
The platters drifted forth, wafting steam and baked-scent into the starry night. Wilson and Anna shared expressions of martyrs. They sat down together at the table; a miserable, unnecessary decorous couple.
Mr. Grey turned so that his back was to the table, and flagged one of the harvesters delivering the latest course with an upraised finger. This one was a grizzled, middle-aged woman, with her hair plaited in two braids over her collarbone, and a plowshare-pattern on her robe. Mr. Grey said, “Excuse me, miss. I think you might have heard us mention we were looking for someone?” Honeydew clicked groanfully.
“That we did lad,” said the woman. She stopped and set her hands on her hips.
“And did your, well, clan, or family, ever meet Miss Coats? Her first name’s Jodee.”
“Aye, yes sir. A fine lady she were, I can tell you!”
“Reallytruly?” Mr. Grey’s elbow settled next to his plate, his fingers pinched a corner of his small mustache, and his spine leaned against the wicker table; all to express the surprise his face couldn’t. “You had a friendly exchange?”
“Cordial ‘nough.”
“I only ask because of that hole in your tent.”
“Tell you true, sir, it were more like as she kicked us in the pants.”
“Your pants?”
“You see sir, here in Dreamland, when you’ve harvested and wandered, hither and thither, over rocks and roots, there’s this temper starts to settle in yer mind. All folks what come here end up thinking thus: ‘what’s to pass is to pass, and there’s nothin’ to do fer it’. That works well. That works good. But we get in this way of wantin’ to settle. To eat more of the trees in one spot than another, to harvest more from one place. Our bones want to sit, and sometimes it takes an outside foot to get ‘em rolling again. That’s all it were, sir. An’ if the wurst is we get’s a hole in a tent, that ain’t too poor a trade.”
“Is that safe though? Breaking the Odormoats for one’s own excitement?”
“Oh sir, I don’t mean breakin’ no laws. Grant you, Coats were magic enough on that topic. We never took her words at their surface. It were more the idea, sir, if you see my point. We’re content in Dreamland. There’s lots o’ dreams to see. But it were good to have a reminder that they only get seen if you go see ‘em.”
“Well, you know your own business.”
A call came for the woman in the plowshare-robe to rejoin the kitchen staff. She turned to leave but added, “I’m fer going. If you seek miss Coats, best you head out to the woods after her. She’s yet a lost soul, same as all new folk.”
“Thank you, miss…?”
“Yer welcome sir,” said the middle-aged woman. She shuffled off through the grass.
Mr. Grey returned to the table. Wilson and Anna were enjoying a pair of cornflake-and-apple tarts; he watched the chewed tarts drop down their translucent necks. A crow had hopped closer to Mr. Grey’s plate while he’d been talking with the harvester. It cawed at him once, in a playful way, and hopped away with a stolen kernel. Mr. Grey plucked one himself and nibbled.
Honeydew leaned in and held the apple out. She said, “See? These people get around even more than before. No harm in sticking with them.”
Mr. Grey said, “But Jodee won’t bother them again, do you think?”
“Probably not. So what?”
“If she’s less likely to rejoin the harvesters, we’re less likely to find her here.”
“Not bad reasoning,” said Honeydew with a reluctant click of agreement.
“And if she’s lost, and we go wandering, we’d have a higher chance of encountering each other. An accidental meeting with her’s more likely that way.”
“Terrible reasoning. You’re doing the same thing you did with Tom.”
“Pardon?”
“You’re pushing for pointless wandering. Looking for trouble. Getting our visa stolen. All for this ridiculous Jodee Quest.”
Mr. Grey picked at his kernels. Honeydew took a loud crunch from the apple. The murmur of the other feasters sounded, in their ears, somehow muted. The McDourrs stood to leave; another course was called; the McDourr’s sat.
Honeydew set the apple down and ran her palms along the edges of her plate. She said, “Look, our visa’s gone anyway. What’s the point in following Jodee if we can’t get back to Starharbor ourselves?”
In a lower voice Mr. Grey said, “You wanted to see the sights. You said the only things worth seeing were those which took effort to build.”
“True. But if we only stop for brief moments - as at the barn - we’re not seeing. Not experiencing. We’re just passing through.” After a pause, she added, “I want to see this place. I like Dreamland.”
“Besides,” said the harvester-man with the mustache, who’d been eavesdropping their conversation. “Once yer in Dreamland, you can never escape.”
The two looked sharply at him.
The man laughed. “Just kiddin’! Oh the forest is dangerous. But nothing traps you inside. And yer safe if yer under a ladder.”
Mr. Grey nodded. He turned his attention away from everything - the ghosts, the crows, the harvesters, the food - and focused on Honeydew.
“I don’t like running wild through the woods either,” he admitted. “But we’ve got everything we need to search for Jodee now. We’ve got a ladder which gives us food and shelter. And we’ve got a light. And I’ve got my enchanting to handle other turbulences. And, besides all that, it’s not as if we have to rush in-to and out-from everywhere we go. We can take some moments to appreciate any ancients’ ruin or festive gathering. We’re enjoying this one now. But let’s not give up on the goal behind all our effort, just because we’ve had a setback or two. If we set out now with a new will, I have a feeling this vacation will turn in our favor. We’ll find our visa, find Jodee, find the migration office. At this point you and I are overdue for a spot of smoother weather.”
“But-”
Mr. Grey interrupted her in his enthusiasm. “And if we just follow these harvesters, well then we’re not actually achieving it on our own. Are we? We’re reliant on others.”
“But…” said Honeydew again, though this time the pause was her own.
Mr. Grey grabbed a pair of roast-pumpkin wedges from a nearby platter. He kept one, offered the other to Honeydew, and raised his hand to toast. He said, “I think by now, you and I have the experience to tackle whatever this old wood has in store.”
Honeydew took the slice-of-gourd. After a moment, she clicked and toasted.
The McDourrs stood again. “And on that enchanting note-” began Anna McDourr.
“Pumpkin-wheels, cobbled-corn, and apple rounds. Course six!” called the old woman.
The Ghosts, Mr. Grey, Honeydew, the harvesters, the crows - even the lantern lights, and the towering tents, and the grass, and the moon and the stars - bent toward the table, and took part in the Dreamland feast.