Chapter 6 - Tom

Time went up the airy mountain, down the rushy glen…

Mr. Grey… Mr. Grey… was in the woods. Somewhere. After the feast’s end, He and Honeydew had made a quick leave-taking from the Harvester camp. And now they were in the woods. Walking. They might walk for a good, long while… Could be boring to follow.

Let’s not.

Away with the floor of roots and weeds. Away with the rattling leaves; with bright, ripe pumpkins. Away with the forest entirely. Let perspective slide through Dreamland’s velvet sky, past the pricking of the stars, past the horned moon. Let it rush like bitter Old Wind, away, above an ocean of woods. And then, let it return. Let perspective plummet. Let it dive, past the rattling leaves, past the bright, ripe pumpkins. Let it drop, drop, drop…

Tom raced his sweat droplets down a cobblestone wall. The cloud zeppelins of his robe seemed suddenly lead-heavy, and descended like storm clouds past a backdrop of mortared stone and moss. He landed, with a soft thud, in a marigold bed. Tom set the barrel of his mallet against the soil - carefully avoiding further crushing the plants - and pushed himself upright. He leaned on the handle. He looked up. His jaw dropped.

Tom had fallen into a flower garden.

All across the cultivated vista - half lit by the cold moon, half by the baked light of swingy iron lamps - flowers bloomed; in fantastic abundance, in fantastic height, in fantastic variety. There were sunflowers and snowdrops and daisies. There were lotus and lavender, dandelion and daffodil. Here, underneath him, were marigolds. There were orchids. Farther off: roses, and wallflowers, and dahlias, and jonquils, and chrysanthemums, every petal of which seemed to cry, “Welcome home, my dear sir!” Tom stepped, half-conscious, off the marigold bed. Then he simply stared unconscious of all else; delirious with rapture, spellbound with joy.

The fall of a second person jolted him back to the present. A body rushed down from the same place he’d fallen. It landed with a squeak in the exact same spot on the Marigold bed. Tom winced.

Rising to her feet, gasping for breath, and fumbling hysterically for her smoking pipe, Ms. Maysey looked upon the odorful flowers in fear.

In a nasally voice, Tom asked, “You alright, lady Maysey?”

Ms. Maysey spoke between hyperventilating drags on the pipe and exhales of smoke. “I think… I’m well… As much as… Can reallytruly be expected… Given the circumstances… And my preexisting-” Ms. Maysey stopped when she saw Tom’s uncomprehending look. “Oh right, my mistake… I mean I’m healthy enough… Given where we are… Attacked by odors… Wafting at us from all sides.”

Tom set his mallet down and stepped with care over to Ms. Maysey. Her mouse hair quivered and stared at Tom with wide bead-eyes. He brought up both hands, either to hug her or strangle her, she felt sure. Instead of doing either, Tom only took Ms. Maysey by the shoulders and guided her off the bed of marigolds. She said, “Oh, yes, my mistake.” Tom reached down and tried to buck up some of the flattened flowers, more of which had been crushed under his wide surface than Ms. Maysey’s skinny frame. He then backed off the bed and picked up his mallet.

Tom neither spoke nor progressed through the garden. A half-step further brought the corner of his eye in line with the tall, panthery display of a huge hollyhock. Tom swiveled over to it. He leaned out with unexpected grace and sniffled at its petals.

Ms. Maysey stood a pace back. She held her legs with ankles together and knees a-quiver, and held her shoulders in a scrunch, as though she feared brushing against a single stem. She watched Tom smell the hollyhock with terror-wide eyes - both in her hair and on her face - and twisted her wrists around her pipe’s stem. In a faint voice she said, “Excuse me, mister Tom, sir.”

Tom turned his darkened, baggy eyes to her with a look of faint surprise, as if he’d just now remembered she was there. He said, “Did you need something?”

“Why goodness me, no. Only, should you be smelling? These are fierce flowers.”

“I only wanted a sniff. We just arrived here.”

“We did just arrive. I don’t disagree. Should we introduce ourselves - before admiring - to the landowner? Or the tender of the plants?”

Ms. Maysey’s voice faded to a higher and higher whisper. Tom’s attention waned. He pulled his handkerchief - freshly laundered, airy as a cloud, crisply folded - from a pocket. While keeping shadowed-eyes locked with the tall hollyhock, he blew his nose noisily into his handkerchief. After a quick twist and a wipe, he stuffed the soiled cloth back into its pocket, and sank toward the oily petaled face.

Ms. Maysey darted anxious eyes down the neat cobbled paths through the beds. The verdure rose in such height and profusion that she saw no architecture beyond the wall over which they dropped. A sourceless whispering, however, and sporadic shrieks of high laughter, resounded beyond the gaudy thickets.

Ms. Maysey cleared her throat - a light sound closer to a whimper - and babbled. “Do you think it’s expensive, the fee at this place? I hope they have rooms. I have some novelty spoons, and a few cat bones, though that would be steep. When I was in Wine Medo - I think where you’re from? - I had a fine room, for the price of a bookmark! Oh and by the way (I don’t mean to pry) did you bring your own treasure? For the hotel stay? If you’re feeling sick - I understand that feeling! - and it slipped your mind. I can pay, of course. Only, if it’s expensive-”

Tom had gently pushed aside the giant hollyhock, and peered at the other side of the bloom. Now he stepped toward the mouse-haired woman. Tom held up a palm; Ms. Maysey’s teeth snapped down on a half-spoken word. Tom said, “I don’t think it’s a hotel.”

“You think this garden’s private?”

Tom laid his heavy palm on Ms. Maysey’s shoulder - she twitched - and led her a short way on a clean path of smooth stones. They rounded a sharp corner at an intersection, and looked past an open plot of low-growing flowers.

A wall of bleachy plaster sprouted from the earth across the clearing. The wall formed one side of a massive home. The pair stood across from a central facade, with a wide front porch, and two new, cottage-style doors. Long wings of the house ran beyond sight into the towering flowers. The windows were made of too-clean glass and cell-like lattices. They glowed with an inside light so coldly pale, that it seemed to burn all it fell upon. Under the moon’s equally pallid shine, the plaster house had a look of sterility. It made the beds of flowers seem artificial by proximity. The ivy climbing its walls in evenly-spaced swatches, and the hedges lining its base cut into geometrically-perfect rectangles, seemed fake. The plants grew beside the icy wall like vomit.

Between Tom and the house, in the shorter garden beds of the clearing, other people wandered. They wore uniform cardigan robes of the same plasterishness as the walls, uniform age lines over their faces, and uniform, senile eyes.

Tom chose not to attend the wandering elders, though some goggled fixedly at him and Ms. Maysey. He chose not to look at the bright house. His eyes turned, naturally, to the visual comfort of the flowers. He noticed a prickly patch of asphodels, thrusting out with their split porcelain petals and hazel-bulb-tipped spikes. He went to inspect.

“I do think we should go now,” said Ms. Maysey. She tapped her pipe on her lower lip and set each pair of her mouse-hair’s eyes tracking a different old man or woman. “To the manager; whoever’s in charge. Doesn’t it seem impolite? Trespassing in here? Without permission?”

Tom said, “Just let me see these.” He veered to a profusion of forget-me-nots matching the sky of his robe.

“If I’d known there’d be flowers… When you came to me, asking for Dreamland… And I not knowing myself… I’m happy to help, don’t misunderstand! It’s only my condition, which has me worried.”

“Thanks again for the dream help.”

Ms. Maysey’s face dropped in a pitiable look of misery. She tugged nervously on one of her hair’s tails, making it squeak. Her many eyes followed the ambles of the old men and old women, wandering the garden in their silken, pasty garments.

One of the old folks lurched suddenly from the taller flowers where they’d just been. Tom glanced at the leeched-looking grandmother swaying on the clean stone path. He turned back to the forget-me-knots. Ms. Maysey nearly jumped from her saddle-robe. She shrank almost to a crouch as the grandmother extended a crooked arm - the veins on the back of her hand wriggling like worms beneath afterbirth-thin skin - and ran a bent finger with a curling fingernail along one of Ms. Maysey’s shivering mice.

“Pretty vermin,” said the grandmother. She smiled a stained, toothy smile.

“Thank you,” said Ms. Maysey. At least, her mouth formed those words. Any sound that escaped her throat went beyond the range of peoples’ hearing. The grandmother cackled.

Ms. Maysey fought for a voice. She saw that the grandmother held a book against her hip with the other hand, with a pale thumb marking place. Ms. Maysey asked, “What’s that you’re reading?”

The grandmother turned her whole face down slowly - with a cracking of neck bones - to look at the book, as if forgetting she held it. She reversed the motion just as slowly - with the exact same cracks - to stare at Ms. Maysey dizzily. The grandmother said, “A story.”

“A- a good one?”

“A girl who flew in a Dutch oven.”

“That sounds like fun.”

“She fell into a volcano. Baked alive.”

“Oh.”

The Grandmother shrieked. Then she hobbled away, toward the pearly house. Ms. Maysey watched the departure. The mice of her hair had blanched to the same paleness of the grandmother’s hand.

“You know something Tom,” said Ms. Maysey after gathering her wits. “I do think you’re right. I doubt we’ll find bed and board, not at this structure. Not that I’m judging, it’s a splendid residence. But we’d take up space. We can go elsewhere.”

Tom didn’t answer. By then he had moved to a plot of tulips. His mallet lay forgotten on the paving stones.

Ms. Maysey hefted at the weapon’s handle to bring it to Tom. She couldn’t get the barrel off the ground. She dragged the mallet, in jerks and tugs, over the clean stone path. Between each pull she said, “Pardon, Mr. Tom… Mr. Tom, would you… I’m not sure how to proceed… You know, Mr. Tom… Time might be crucial… If Mr. Grey’s in danger…”

Tom gently took his fingers from the nearest tulip. He whirled on Ms. Maysey and glowered from tired, bloodshot eyes. He stormed into her personal space. In a husky voice he said, “Now you’re calling me lazy? Siding against me, just like everyone.”

Ms. Maysey cowered and shook. The mallet handle fell from her hands and clattered on the smooth stones.

Tom sighed. He hefted the mallet over a shoulder - not as easily as a short time past - and said, “I thought Mr. Grey anxious, but you take the cake.”

“Oh dear, I’m sorry. It’s my condition. I’m-”

Tom waved a hand. “Forget about it. You’re right to press on.” Tom took out his handkerchief again and blew from his nose a note of mournful defeat.

“I have some cologne. If you need any.” Ms. Maysey rifled the many pockets of her pilling robe.

Tom patted her hand; she jumped. He said, “I’ll be well enough.”

Tom spun on his feet like a drill sergeant, scanned the roaming elders in creamy robes, and shouted. “We need directions! To a migration office. Or the nearest hedge. Or if you can tell, to Mr. Grey directly.” Tom thought for a tock, and glanced with sudden suspicion at the nests of flowers. As a precaution, he added, “Who is that I see?”

Almost immediately, something sprang from the flowers. It wasn’t a Long-Face; it was a short person, coming up to Tom’s waist. Tom smiled genially. At first. But something about the little man’s looks made him suddenly uneasy. The man wore a crisp cardigan robe with an oily pistachio-sheen, and had a spearmint face to match. Beneath a conical, bedazzled hat - like the end of a lipstick sharpened with a penknife - the tiny man’s eyebrow and mouth formed themselves into two long, thin, hard, parallel lines across his face.

The faerie orderly - which is what the tiny man was - said, “The flowers are for looking at. Not touching.”

---

“Hear ye, hear ye! The Queen’s-Law-mandated rest period now commences. Take this meed my sweeties. Feast on the wondrous meal. Made specially, just for you.”

A battleaxe of a faerie made this announcement from a wooden stool behind a spotless glass counter, her voice amplified with a wave from a pinecone-tipped wand. Tom turned his heavy head towards her. From his seated position - rolling across the break room floor in a creaky leather wheelchair - she looked similar to the other faeries in the garden home: crisp robe, minty fresh face, peppermint cone-cap. This battleaxe wore her hair in two remorselessly tight buns, and her voice rang with cloying cruelty.

Tom rolled his heavy eyes off the battleaxe behind the counter when the orderly faerie jerked his wheelchair to a halt in front of a polished plastic table. Food sprawled out before Tom, beneath the pickling light of an overhead lantern. Kerneled corn and roast squash and baked apples were there, of course, but also bowls of peppermint beans, and plates piled high with sugary clouds of cotton, and - most tempting of all - a salad bowl overflowing with licorice; pre-noodleized. Every dish looked fresh from the fields. Too fresh, in a way. The food had a sheen to it, as though it had been stored in vacuum-sealing, and not all the plastic had come away.

Tom did not sit alone. On the other side of the table, Ms. Maysey cast pleased eyes upon the food panorama. Her saddle robe, like Tom’s cloud-zeppelin one, had been replaced by the heavy cream, cardigan style.

The faerie orderly at the back of Tom’s chair skipped around to the side. The top of his ruby hat only came up to Tom’s elbow. The orderly reached, and undid the leather strap fasting Tom’s left wrist to the armrest. He lashed it to a wooden loop under the table. He did the same for the other arm. Tom, though tired, spoke in a stern voice. “Where’d you thieves put my mallet? Or my handkerchief? Or Ms. Maysey’s pipe?”

The faerie sneered at him. “Now you enjoy the eats, old timer. And watch the show.”

“Where is all our stuff!”

Tom’s shout turned the heads of several silk-robed elders in the break room, and most of the faeries. The battleaxe gave him a patronizing, sickly-sweetly-stern wag of her head, and held a manicured, too-long finger to her lips. The orderly at Tom’s side twisted his cone cap, and said, “Now don’t be cross, old timer. Or it’s bed and no supper.”

The little man sniggered and marched away, though he stopped next to another elder to jump and kick his heels together.

Tom scanned the breakroom. Other polished plastic tables dotted the floor, equally stacked with laminated food. Tom noticed that none of the other wheelchair-bound elders were lashed to the tables; only himself and Ms. Maysey. The other old folks were almost comatose. Every so often one would let off a sharp, mad cackle or ragged spell of coughing. But then the battleaxe-faerie would set her matronizing eyes upon the offender, and the noise would cease. One old husband and wife sat in the corner, before an open-fronted box of wood. A faerie hidden below the box had his hand stuffed into tiny puppets, and was then performing a puppet show. One hand puppet said to the other, “Now you must be sure you eat all the food the faeries give you, my grandmother. You must be big and strong.” In an unaltered, equally-high-pitched voice, the other puppet said, “Oh I will, granddaughter. You are the wisest and most noble girl in all the land.”

Ms. Maysey saw that Tom wore heavy bags under his eyes, heavier than when they’d first tumbled into the garden. She said, “Did they work you, Mr. Tom?”

Tom nodded glumly. “They had me spinning.”

“Well that’s terrible! I mean, it is, isn’t it? Lashed onto a bike?”

Tom shook his head, still glumly. “Lashed to a spindle.”

“Oh reallytruly? Well at least we’re still active. We’re staying healthy. I think that’s the goal, keep everyone in good health!”

“They stole all my belongings. Trussed us to our seats.”

“They took my stuff too. And my treasure purse: a dozen bookmarks, six novelty spoons, a standard spice rack. I hope it’s all for the best.”

Tom banged a fist on the table, making the food - and Ms. Maysey’s hair - squeak. The battleaxe looked up and stared. Tom said, “They have no right to keep us.”

Ms. Maysey caught her breath. “But aren’t they helping us out? They know my illness, they did a checkup. And aren’t there lots of flowers. Don’t you like flowers?”

“Those were false flowers.”

“Those artificial? But they appeared so vivid.”

“Not artificial. But meant to lure people in. To trap them inside.”

“Oh dear, you think so?”

Tom cast his steely eyes from side-to-side. He leaned toward Ms. Maysey. He ignored the food, with effort, and said, “We need to resist. To find an escape. And don’t taste of their cuisine. It’ll fuddle you, turn your mind to paste.”

Ms. Maysey had just then been readying her fork. She looked doubtfully from Tom, to the bowl of shiny peppermint beans, then back to Tom. She said, “Is that worse than resistance, do you know for sure? Because it’s a fact; resistance is unhealthy, in my state of health.”

“You must fight them Ms. Maysey.” Tom shook the table with his strapped wrist again for emphasis. The battleaxe, however, decided enough was enough. She gave a tight, disappointed look to Tom, and a knowing one to an orderly sitting in the corner. The faerie set aside the single shoe he’d been cobbling. He rushed over and lashed Tom back into the wheelchair with the help of several other orderlies.

As the faeries carted Tom from the breakroom, he called back, “Resist, Ms. Maysey!”

Several similar occasions later, the faeries wheeled Tom in from jogging-activity. His pale face and sweaty thin hair made him look iller still. Behind the glass counter, the same battleaxe announced, “How now, sweet peas? All hungry for a lovely lunch? Remember to stuff yourselves full. One should never leave a meal hungry!”

Tom was pushed once again to miss Maysey’s table. Little had changed. The puppet box had been packed away. In its place, an old gramophone played a scratchy, warbly jazz rendition of ‘Shine on, Harvest Moon’. Though Tom had no way to compare to the two, the music - in that shiny room, with its pistachio-oil lanterns, and its fake-smiling faeries - sounded somehow sadder than the live playing of the ghostly McDourrs. Though Tom didn’t know it, instruments were banned in the garden house of the faries.

A different orderly wheeled Tom up to the table and tied him to it. This one did not smile. This one pulled the leather straps tight, and said in a high-pitched growl, “Eat your lunch, big fella. Else it’s big trouble.”

By the time Tom wrapped his head around the orderly’s words, the little man had marched off, pumping his fists and elbows in a jog. Tom sighed, and looked across the table to Ms. Maysey.

Ms. Maysey looked up from the plate of variety beans she was shoveling into her mouth with an oversized, wooden spoon. She swallowed, then said, “Something amiss, Mr. Tom?”

Tom lolled his head back and looked at the tiled ceiling. “Nothing’s amiss, Ms. Maysey.” He spoke without looking at her. “We’re prisoners here, but I’m great elsewise.”

“Because you’re looking ragged. No offense I mean! But your robe’s sweat-dark. And you haven’t eaten yet.”

“The food’s cursed Maysey. You’re buying into their trap. Eating up their cheese.”

“But the puppet shows, they say it’s for our own good. That ‘full equals fit’, and ‘plump means not sick’. My favorite’s the wolf one: ‘Eat and eat and eat. Grow and grow and grow. Bigger, thicker, stronger too. Be like Mr. Wolf!’”

Tom brought his eyes from the ceiling tiles to the table and Ms. Maysey. Today’s spread: apple pie, pumpkin pie, corn nuts, and Maysey’s beans. “Food can make you strong,” Tom admitted. “But it can turn against you. I learned that hard-wise. Back with- Mr. Grey.”

One of the other residents shuffled over to Tom’s table; an elderly man with a bald pate. Tom had never spoken to the man, but they looked as though they belonged together with their pearly cardigan uniforms. The grandfather eyed the battleaxe behind the counter to ensure she wasn’t looking. He shuffled up to Tom, held out a corn nut bag, and whispered, “Can you open this? My fingers can’t get-”

Tom reached with his leash-shorted arm. The grandfather set the bag in Tom’s hand, and Tom helped the old geezer pull the bag open. The man whispered, “Thank you kind master,” and shuffled quietly away. Tom looked carefully at Ms. Maysey and the table during the exchange; he didn’t want to cause the old man trouble with the head faerie. But after the man had gone, Tom wore a crinkle in his brow. He said, “I bet they steal old people, these garden faeries. They snatch us at night. Then put a doppelganger, one of their own kind.”

“MmmMMmmm. What makes you say that,” asked Ms. Maysey through a mouthful of beans.

“There’s a similar Ogur. A Wine Medo tale.”

Tom leaned at Ms. Maysey. She jumped, but not as much as before. She’d gotten used to Tom’s sudden shifts. She raised a finger to speak, but Tom continued, “The windows are thick; double-heavy stuff. There’s no metal here either. It’s all wood and glass. The garden walls soar; they’re taller on the inside. The mint-men see all; they’re like prison guards. If we’re going to escape, we need to think hard. What is it this time?” he asked suddenly, noticing Ms. Maysey waving for his attention. She pointed to his left. Tom turned.

The mean faerie orderly stood at Tom’s elbow. It gave him a toothpastey smile. “Sounds like this old bear needs another good run.”

Many, many moments later, Tom was once more wheeled to the break room. He looked ragged. His skin hung loose and pallid on his frame. His eyes - deeper sunken in their sockets - shone with a haunted twinkle.

The scene was almost identical. The light in the room remained ‘harshly bright’ as always. Tom’s only indication of time’s not repeating itself was the battleaxe’s cry of, “Pre-bed snack time. You rambunctious youngsters. Don’t forget; no good sleep’s done on an empty belly.”

Tom hardly noticed as his newest orderly wheeled him once more to the table. His chin sagged against his chest. Dancing class had nearly broken him; no one could keep up with faeries in the dance.

The orderly buckled Tom to the table while saying, “Look buddy, if you eat, they won’t work you so hard, tee hee, tee hee. But if you keep making a fuss, they’ll pack you off to Queen’s Prison, tee hee, tee hee. Take some advice, just eat the food, tee hee, tee hee.” The orderly slid Tom’s bedtime snack onto the table and walked away in a bowlegged strut.

Tom, after many tocks, mustered the energy to lift his sweaty brow. On the table, on the plate set before him, stacked into a leaning tower drizzled with caramel, were bonbons.

Tom almost gave in. He lifted one sweat-cold, cardigan-clad arm. He reached with stinging muscles to take one of the shiny chocolate mystery chests. Just as his fingers pinched into the peanut-butter, bowtie-styled sides of one special-dark box, he saw a glass next to his plate. A drink they’d provided.

Milk.

Tom released a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. His sight went dim for a moment. But he caught his consciousness, grasped it, and held it with a will. He brought the arm back and let it slump on the wheelchair arm.

“Ms. Maysey, are you still there?” he asked. Tom could have mustered the strength to tilt his head and look across the table. But better, he thought, to conserve every joule.

“I liked his way of talking; with tee hee, tee hee!” Ms. Maysey’s voice sounded light and airy to Tom’s ears. Not with timidity, but as if ‘childish babble’ were her first language. She went on, “Ohhhhh lookie, bonbons! Can you share them Tom? I mean, is sharing allowed?”

Tom shook his head slowly. His vision had narrowed to a tunnel on the chocolates. He watched the plate slide away, not ungratefully. Tom said, “Why am I making the plan? Every time we meet, you just eat and eat. You’re stuck on their wheel, Maysey.”

An un-Maysey-like sound - a snorting as she stuffed herself with bonbons - came from the table’s other side. Between chews Ms. Maysey said, “Did you see last supper’s show? The puppets were grand! ‘Rat and Sparrow and Bratwurst’; living together, making a household.”

“If you hadn’t been taken, we might have escaped. But there’s no iron. And the faerie at the bar - the old battleaxe - hates me uniquely. She has them work me extra: longer dancing class, tougher weaving plans, harder carpentry models.”

“Ooooooh, quiet now, Tom. This show’s my favorite one: ‘Feasting Enchantress’!”

“They’re wearing me down, Maysey. I can’t fight alone. You need to assist. You’re the cause of the problem.”

“Listen to that, Tom. A dozen courses! That’s fine fare, tee hee, tee hee!”

Tom shoved his chair away as he jumped to his feet, and lifted his eyes to look at Ms. Maysey. His tunnel-vision captured her head. He saw - it was some relief - her usual quiver of lip and shiver of hair-mice.

It was the last thing he saw. The effort overwhelmed him. Tom coughed; the sweaty, blood-tasting kind of cough. He tottered. He collapsed. He heard the battleaxe give a soft, “Tisk, tisk, tisk.” He heard the orderlies come. He heard them unleash him from the table. He heard the squeak of wheels as they pushed his body across the tiled floor.

---

Tom heard a creak; the air shuddered as the plastic door of a different dormitory bedroom slammed closed, entombing a different old occupant. He heard a hollow, heavy thud; the dropping into place of a wooden crossbar. He heard the orderly call down the dormitory hall; the same phrase, repeating.

“Tucked tight in your beds, old girls and boys. Dream of creamy-filled sweetbreads, not a peep now of noise! Tee hee, Tee hee.”

Tom shifted under the taut, silken top sheet of his four-poster. He looked past the open bedcurtain to his bedroom’s open door. Beyond the round plastic threshold, the hall lanterns shed a urine glow. The orderly had still sounded several doors away. If Tom could just rise. If he could just reach the door and rush the orderly, before the minty fairy brought its pinecone wand to bear. There might yet be a chance at escape.

But this was a familiar scene to Tom. This four-poster bed, this sterile room, this restrictive top sheet, these same exact thoughts. He’d been through it all at the time of his capture. He’d been sick then too, but stronger than now. Now, every muscle in his big body screamed at the slightest shifting. And the tucked top sheet restrained him the same as at every other bedtime. Tom didn’t try escaping from the bed. It was pointless.

Something scratched at the thick glass of the room’s window. Tom rolled his head to the other side, on the extra-firm, duckfeather pillow. The same tall rosebush that always stood in that view, stood there now. It blocked out the moon, scratched noisily at the glass, and made sleep light and miserable. He rolled his head back to the center. He stared at the jumping sheep patterned canopy of the bed. He let dormitory ambience fill his weary mind: the scratching bush, the sealing of bedroom doors, the hotel-like ancestor-odor of the pillow, the call of the orderly.

“Tucked tight in your beds, old girls and boys. Dream of creamy-filled sweetbreads, not a peep now of noise! Tee hee, Tee hee.”

There was another voice too, coming from behind his headboard. Ms. Maysey babbled in the adjacent room. He heard her through the thin plaster wall.

“Mhmm, sweetbread dreams,” came her squeaky, too-mirthy, muffled voice through the wall. “And boiled beans in a big pewter pot. Tee hee, too hoo!”

“I’m at a loss, Ms. Maysey.” Tom spoke to the air - loud enough for her to hear, though he wasn’t sure she understood him anymore. “We cannot escape, not without iron. All the faeries are awful; little mean people.”

Tom coughed. A line of spittle flew up and landed back on his chin. He couldn’t reach his arms to wipe it away. He didn’t try.

He heard Ms. Maysey say, “Bed as soft as butter, blankets wrapped like cheese, send me off to dreamy sleep, please please please!” He even heard the tiny little squeaks her hair gave as she bobbed her head to the tune.

“I tried to think of a plan,” Tom went on. He heard another door slam, and the orderly’s rhyme again. “Or perhaps a scheme, as Honeydew says… She’d better be helping him. Mr. Grey needs help, needs to be prodded. He can’t do it on his own. And I can’t help him, not from this prison. I’m being de-energized; feeling like a slug.”

“Oh there once was a lady named Maysey (That’s me!),

“Whose hair grew all manner of crazy,

“It squeaked past her ears,

“But we’ll lop it with shears,

“And soon she’ll be dear as a daisy!”

Tom lay without motion, staring at the jumping sheep. He heard another crossbar drop and another faerie bedtime jingle. He said, “I know you don’t mean your words. That it’s the cursed food, which makes you talk so. But why’d you not fight fiercer, in the early days?”

Tom thought he heard something shift under the four-poster. He tried wriggling underneath the sheet toward the nearest side. The effort sent fire arcing through his muscles, and got him no closer to the edge. He gave up. “Most likely it’s faerie tricks,” Tom spoke mostly to himself. “Meant to unnerve me. Or it’s a Long-Face. I’d probably let it win. No point in struggling, not at this juncture.”

Ms. Maysey said, “Yawn!” She didn’t actually yawn, only said the word. Tom looked out the window again. The rosebush moved in a cold, howling Wind. It clawed against the glass. When it shifted for a moment to the side, he could see gargoyles lining the garden house’s balcony.

Tom mused on. “How am I supposed to help? To fight for people, caught in dire trouble, who never fight for themselves? When I was healthy, and feeling awake- Even then I fought alone, for other peoples’ cares.”

Tom coughed. He kept coughing. Spit and tears flew from his mouth and eyes. He couldn’t expand his chest to clear the bile in his throat; couldn’t bring his hands to wipe at his face. He couldn’t see; he couldn’t speak. He could only lie there, eyes squinted shut, choking on illness, sinking into misery.

Then, something soft touched his face. Then, the sheets loosened. Not enough to free him, but Tom brought in a big gulp of air. He heaved the mucus from his throat with a final, tossing cough. He fell back, exhausted to his pillow. The soft thing cleared his chin and cheeks for him, then came away from his face. Tom opened his eyes.

Hovering in the air before him was his handkerchief. It looked fresh except for the staining of the fit he’d just been through. Tom looked sideways to the creature holding it.

There was the orderly who called out bedtimes. The little man had loosened Tom’s bedsheets. If Tom had the energy, or the wherewithal, he might have jumped the fellow. But Tom had no energy. He could only stare blurrily.

Tom did stare. He took a closer look at this orderly. The short man wore the same robe of mint, but his face missed the cruel-humor which twisted the faces of the other faeries. This face wasn’t goodly, but neither was it bad. Tom looked closer at the face; at the diminutive, slightly-furry face. Stoical, one might call it. Almost pipkin-stoatish in its features.

“Just eat the food, buddy,” said the pipkin-orderly-faerie-stoat. He turned and walked from the room, giving a final, “Tee hee, tee hee,” as he went. The door shut. The crossbar was fastened. The little man had left Tom’s handkerchief.

Tom smiled in the dark.

On the other side of the wall, Tom heard Ms. Maysey’s rambling. Muffled now, not just by the wall, but by her drifting off to sleep:

“And sleepy Maysey, yawning said;

“Good folk, my treasure’s gone;

“You have my wealth withdrawn:

“I have no spoons within my purse,

“I have no bookmarks either,

“But when your food I freely nurse

“That keeps my health together,

“What needs have I a feather?”

Tom, his arm freed by the loosened sheets, sent a fist against the headboard. It knocked against the plaster wall. Ms. Maysey fell silent. Tom said, “Ms. Maysey, can you hear me?”

“Goodness gracious, Tom.” Ms. Maysey’s startled voice comforted Tom; she could be scared back to her old self yet. “You gave me a start. I was just going to sleep. Halfway there almost…”

“In your treasure purse, you had some novelty spoons, when we first came here. Didn’t you say so?”

“I guess I said so. But my song wasn’t- It’s only a happy tune.”

“What were those spoons made out of?”

“Well I hardly remember. Metal probably? What prompts the questions? Shouldn’t we be off to sleep?”

Tom smiled again in the dark. He wagged his head to himself. “No time for sleeping. No time for sulking either. Time to make a plan. Time to break this jail.”

“Oh dear, that sounds exertive. My constitution…”

“Don’t fret Ms. Maysey. I’ll break the food curse on you. And I’ll get us out. We’ll quest once again. We’ll recover Mr. Grey.”