Chapter 9 - Stone-Head Town
“First time marrying the ropemaker’s daughter and learning to fly?” asked the man standing next to Mr. Grey.
“What?” asked Mr. Grey.
From the scaffold’s side a hangman cried, “Right, lift ‘em!”
Mr. Grey, Honeydew, and half-a-dozen other people with ropes about their necks, jerked sharply. Their torsos writhed. Their hands splayed, showing the thin webbing between the fingers. Their legs twitched in a highland jig through empty air. All those noosed did this dance in unison. All but Mr. Grey’s, whose body rocked gently on the rope from the beginning, like a grand piano raised up a pulley system. Gradually though, every other body matched his swing. After a moment, all swayed as he did, slow and rigid, in the open air.
“It’s more breathable than it looked when we donned the ropes,” said Honeydew after a moment. She reached and felt the thick, padded noose fastened below her chin; like an airplane pillow.
Mr. Grey said, “I wonder why they harness us by the neck?”
The traveler dangling at his other side - a woman with a camouflage cardigan-robe patterned in tweezers - said, “Torso straps are too big. Wrist straps are too small. One takes an epoch to buckle and unbuckle. The other’s uncomfortable, and not very safe. The neck harness is just right. Soft, secure, quick to slip on and slip off.”
“You’ve often ridden this lift to Stone-Head Town?”
“I do the dance every time. It’s traditional.” The woman chuckled with a knowing air. “Don’t make yourself uneasy, stranger. We’ll be up the nose before you can say, ‘There’s no place like home’.”
A loud, grinding, cranking noise echoed from far above. At the same time the gibbet passengers were yanked up through another stretch of air. A craggy cliff chin - complete with a tiny goatee of scrub trees - drifted away beneath them as they rose. Mr. Grey looked up.
Their dozen nooses ran above them like taught fishing lines. They stretched over the lower half of a giant stone face, carved in the side of Dreamland’s steepest cliff. Their ropes rose past the chin, lips, and mustache of the face, until they disappeared up the two dark caves of a Coriolanian nose. The towering corn and apple and pumpkin trees did not sprout on the carved-stone monolith. But smaller bushes and vines did grow there, and reached out to where they dangled with prickly needle-fingers. The ubiquitous moon shone clear over the great face. Her light gave the hairy cheeks a sheeny, wet look. As though the stone face were that of some primordial leviathan, just emerged from beneath the ocean waves.
Beside Mr. Grey, Honeydew pulled her hand mirror from its pocket. She examined her strung-up neck in the reflection, and dug a finger beneath the noose to improve the way her hair fell. She said, “I hope there’s shops. I’d love to see Dreamland’s domestic products. If Wine Medo had flowers, and Glory Days had seashells and artifacts, what does Dreamland have? What special fabrics? Or local cuisine? You don’t think we missed a gift shop on the way in, do you?”
Honeydew lifted her hands as though to loose her neck and glanced back at the ground. “Don’t look down,” said Mr. Grey and the tweezer-robed lady beside him at the same time.
“Right. Not a comforting prospect.”
“Alas, it makes it six times longer,” said the lady. Mr. Grey did his best to nod with the noose. He imagined, quite vividly, the cemetery gates they’d passed through on their way to the scaffold. Those wrought-iron points reaching from below. He didn’t need to look down to picture them. And aside from that, Mr. Grey had learned his lesson about looking down back in Glory Days.
Honeydew said, “We should search this town for long-term rentals.”
Mr. Grey twitched his foot until he’d swayed to face Honeydew. “What if Jodee’s not here?”
“Could take time to find out. It’s a big head; probably a big town inside.”
Mr. Grey had started to kick his other foot and turn back the other way, when The Old Wind arrived.
The gibbet-passengers were suddenly tossing in the air. Some flew towards the cliff to be scratched at by the prickly goatee trees. Others swung away from the face, and dangled over the iron cemetery spikes. Their luggage - tied on a spare noose beside the passengers - pitched like a wild wrecking ball among the hanged travelers.
The chatty woman in the tweezers yelped as she came up against the silvered points of a dwarf spruce. She said, “Watch your hems knights and ladies! This old broad gets handsy when she catches us on the lift.”
“Handsy!” The Old Wind blew crisp against their eyes, and spit at their exposed ankles. “As if I’ve no right. You’re the gnomes who’ve traipsed across my tall, tall face. Who shout and chatter in my atmosphere. Handsy! A girl has a right to defend her home.”
“Please Wind,” said Mr. Grey, “we don’t mean to trespass. We’re just entering town. We can hang quietly, would that be okay?”
“‘Just heading into town’, ‘Just passing this way’, ‘Just running hither-thither, making a mess of your atoms, no word of thanks or hello’. It would be better quietly, in that it wouldn’t disturb my deserved sleep. But I’d still have to clean this whole air of your stink after you were gone.”
The Old Wind blew toward the face. Mr. Grey, Honeydew, and the other passengers braced with feet and hands as they came against verdant stubble beneath the lower lip. Then The Old Wind gusted crosswise. The luggage-ball whooshed sideways. It mashed through the same needley branches, and smacked a local man wearing a robe with millstone cufflinks. Left and right, and up and down, and crosswise and longways, The Wind blew. The passengers’ cries and complaints, she smothered beneath her own screams. “Careless as the new moon!” “Cunning as the stars at dawn!” “Brazen as the sun on a cloudless day!”
Just when it seemed she’d tear the riders to mites on the stone face’s thorny chin, another tug on the nooses cranked them up. They swayed in front of the lower lip, out of the overgrown beard. The Wind tossed them against the two round, parallel ledges of stone mouth. But the hanging travelers were able to brace without being torn by branches. The Wind said, “I hope the whole town’s under a slumbering enchantment.” Then she drifted over to the dark granite of the laugh line, where she flitted sulkily.
The passengers waited for their ropes to settle. Another grinding noise came from above. The unseen sinus-mechanism reeled them in another notch. They swayed before the thin-pressed groove of the stone mouth, like a stretched mirror of Mr. Grey’s face. Honeydew tapped her foot impatiently in the open air and glared at the distant Wind.
Thoughts of the spiked cemetery fence jutting up beneath them crept through the vacuum of speech, and crawled into Mr. Grey’s mind. He said, “Back to accommodations; I hope we’ll only need a sleep or two.”
“Odds are someone in town’s heard of Jodee,” said Honeydew. She kicked her toes a few times to face Mr. Grey. “Shouldn’t you be thorough?”
“We’ll ask someone where to find the best rumor mills. Then we’d visit those places: taverns, cheese shops, what have you. Maybe a few secondary sources: libraries, or parchment shops. If the head gossips don’t know where she is, I doubt the homebodies will.”
“Says who?”
“Jodee hasn’t run a low profile yet.”
“What if she smells stone on her tail?”
“I don’t follow.”
Honeydew clicked impatiently. “What if she caught your scent on The Wind? She might go to ground.”
“She might. I don’t think she knows who-”
“Who called,” asked the Old Wind. She drifted back among the group and again set their nooses swinging.
“I don’t want you here,” said Honeydew as she rotated slowly to face The Wind with a blunt, unflinching face of contempt.
“No one wants me anywhere,” muttered The Wind. The stone Head’s mustache of shrubs rustled above them. “No, they say, ‘Go do your blowing elsewhere.’ I wist not why… When I fill their sails and spread their pollen, your seamen and your farmers can’t get enough. But when all I want is night to relax in the high, high sky-”
“So go bother some sailors,” said Honeydew. She clicked dismissively.
“Aren’t I though?” The Wind shrieked. She rushed to Mr. Grey. She sent him spinning - the threads of his rope groaned as they twisted tighter - and yanked his anchor shawl out of the noose. It nearly fell away; Mr. Grey reached a hand just in time to hold the knot. “Here’s a man gone in for a sailor. You ask me, he’d make a better maidenhead.”
Honeydew stamped a foot in the empty air. “You’re a blowhard bully.” This succeeded in diverting the Wind’s wrath. She flurried instead at Honeydew. The golden-lily-robe snapped in the gale, and Honeydew flew for the stone lips. She braced her feet as before and continued her taunts. “Oh real mature. Do you always knock people around when told uncomfortable truths? Or did you wake up on the wrong side of the weathervane?”
The Old Wind only roiled and thrashed them harder in her tempest. This would have been fine over the lips. The winch-tender in the nose chose that moment, however, to yank them another measure.
They entered the mustache zone.
The Wind and Honeydew began a dogfight over the upper lip. Honeydew got the worst of it. The Wind pounded her repeatedly into the prickly shrubs. The needled bushes tore at Honeydew’s hair and robe, and laced dark scratches across her arms when she tried to brace against the impacts. Honeydew could do little in reprisal. She tried holding herself in a tense fighting stance; tried pulling herself up by the chin. But the effort taxed her. Even when she managed it the padded noose kept her from bringing her sharp shoulders to bear. In the end, Honeydew resorted to randomly flinging her arms and legs as The Wind pummeled. Like a terrier caught by the scruff in an automatic flagpole.
Honeydew kicked; The Wind scraped her across the razor branches. Honeydew lashed her fingernails; The Wind caught her robe like sailcloth. The other condemned passengers yelled as Honeydew’s noose intertwined with their own. The Wind had all their ropes tangled now, like a mutilated Newton’s cradle. The air whistled past Mr. Grey’s ears as he crunched - again and again and again - on the coarse upper lip of Stone-Head Town.
Above, the nose machine cranked again. The rope surged up. But even though they’d left the lips behind long ago, they still swung adjacent to the mustache; the facial features being carved to Easter Island proportions. Mr. Grey felt that either their ropes or their bodies would tear before they reached the safety of the nostril caves. He called to The Wind. “Please Wind, have pity.” Smack. “What if we offer trade?” Crunch. “Anything you want for safe passage?” Snap; the thread of a fraying noose. “Treasure? Windmill flowers? A song?”
The Wind scoffed in the shrubs. “Do you take me for stupid?”
“Y-yes,” said Honeydew dizzily.
“I don’t deal with parasites. There’s one cure for leeches and lice: smash and smash and smash.”
Mr. Grey crashed with a judder against the bramble and the hard earth behind it. He saw his line quiver with the impact. He said, “What about a favor for a favor?” Slam. “We could topple the next scarecrow we see.”
The Wind pulled them back for another throw; or so Mr. Grey thought. He winced and braced. But the impact never came. He opened his eyes, and saw The Wind had stopped blowing. For the moment. They dangled - tangled as one mass of people and luggage - in the open air. Honeydew had taken the worst of the battery. She shook her head, too woozy to speak.
The Wind - her voice still clotted with anger and suspicion - said, “What would knocking down a scarecrow do?”
“It’d keep the crows grounded,” said Mr. Grey in his most persuasive monotone. “And out of the air.”
“Hmmm. That’s worth one intruder escaping without your comeuppance.”
“Our comeuppance,” said Honeydew. She shook off her confusion. “Listen here you whinging, fickle, air-headed little-”
Mr. Grey heard The Wind suck in for another blow.
Just then the noose lift gave another, prodigious crank. Like a mucus-clearing snort. The hanged travelers were hoisted out of the upper lip; away from the brutish Old Wind; into the stone nose.
The metal braces on the arms of Mr. Grey and Honeydew’s chairs snapped down across their wrists. Half-a-tock after, before their reaction, matching clamps closed on their ankles. Mr. Grey and Honeydew squirmed on the hard leather seats. They squirmed in vain; the traps were fastened tight.
“Excuse me, coachman?” Mr. Grey called to the figure in the hooded shape sitting at the box of the vehicle. It wore an oil-dark cardigan-robe, covered in loose strands of hair. The figure cricked its neck slowly toward the pair. It looked upon them for a moment from beneath its hood. Then, still slowly, it reached up with its two gaunt, long-fingered hands. The figure pulled back its hood.
“Mr. Grey, my man!” said Death. His ivory smile splayed the untrimmed hair across his chin like an ornamental fan, and brought a gemstone twinkle to his greasy, baggy eyes. “The man a giant could squeeze water from. How you been, dude?”
“Fine, thank you. I didn’t-”
“And Honeydew? How about you?”
“Fine,” said Honeydew. She didn’t meet Death’s socket eyes. Mr. Grey wondered if she still felt bitter about being denied a glimpse of Death’s resort.
“Great, that’s great to hear. Hope you’re cozy. Don’t get me wrong, I got the fastest roads up here.” Death tapped a fingernail against his bald noggin; it made a hollow, boney sound, like the wall-ticker in the vegetable mansion. “But we gotta long trip. Gotta quest all the way across town for the best digs.”
Mr. Grey said, “We didn’t realize you were a coachman. On top of managing that club of yours?”
“I moonlight.”
“Ah.”
“And it’s not ‘coachman’ in Stone-Head Town. So you know. It’s ‘Director’. A regional gimmick.”
Honeydew said, “We should walk instead. I want to explore town.”
Before Mr. Grey could agree Death said, “Bad call little muskmelon. These are real rural city folks. Suspicions galore for outsiders.”
“Could we undo the braces at least?” asked Mr. Grey. “The carriage seems stable.”
“Sure.”
“Wonderful.”
“But you’d get tossed and trampled if the headless horses bolt.”
Mr. Grey cleared his throat and glanced at Honeydew. “We’ll keep the braces then?”
“Fine,” she said with a click that served as a sigh. “At least take us by the good shops.”
“We’ll find the pearls in this oyster, don’t worry sweetheart. Now then.” Death raised his voice to an usher’s cry. “Any other goblins or ganders wanna hitch this ride?”
Though no goblin or gander spoke, one voice did call out. It requested that Death, “Be pleased to await two footsore wanderers.”
Who should Mr. Grey and Honeydew see appear before the coach step, but the poltergeists, Anna and Wilson McDourr! Mr. Grey and Honeydew stared from their fixed seats at the newcomers; the former with ambivalence; the latter with a quick glance, followed by a quicker averted eye. Wilson and Anna saw Mr. Grey and Honeydew. Anna said, “My love, perhaps we’d better find another.”
“Indeed,” said Wilson. He rubbed a hand through his tonsured scalp. Right through it, his skin being as solid as that between egg and shell. “We dare not crowd your coach, and shall so be transported by another conveyance. And may all prosper with you.”
“Donkey Cabbage,” said Death as the two turned to leave. “Plenty of spots. We’re all friends. Or friends of friends.
“Mr. Death, sir, while we McDourrs count ourselves among your intimate associates, we do not wish to press our company at this present juncture.”
“Bigger the crowd, better the ball.”
“To the point, though,” began Anna. “Wilson was just saying how contrary he fe-”
“Get in,” said Death. The hairs on Mr. Grey and Honeydew’s necks stood.
The McDourrs mounted the coach steps. They set their spectral luggage on the floor by Mr. Grey and Honeydew’s suitcases. They sat, weightless, on the two vacant leather seats. Death didn’t bother unclasping the braces for their arms and ankles; the ghosts simply passed through the metal and assumed the proper posture.
Death and his four passengers had now settled themselves in a ring at the top of the turret-like coach. The four passengers faced in toward each other, with the coach-rail at their backs. Death, meanwhile, drove. He presented them with his boney spine, outlined under his hair-covered robe.
Death said, “Everybody strapped in?” He laughed his smoker’s laugh. Then he gave a sharp crack on the lash and a sudden tug on the reigns. The two headless horses started without a whinny, and the coach jolted forth.
The iron horseshoes and banded wheels clattered and rumbled over a rough cobblestone road leading through Stone-Head Town. They traveled a craggy route, with two and three-storied houses looming on either side, throwing out overhangs to drop dark palls atop their heads. The buildings were densely packed, and in form much like headstones. They had wide fronts, and narrow depths; a square base and a rounded top; and many dwellings had - painted on the fronts above the door - the names of the families living inside, along with their ages of habitation.
When their ride passed through a garden of flowerless, leafless shrub-skeletons, they received a broader view of the town. It nestled in the basin of a long canyon, which must have run as a crack along the great stone head’s skull. A crescent moon and her company of stars fought with the tall, narrow cliffs, and fought with the long arms of branches that grew from those cliffs, and fought with the overhung, slightly-curved buildings, to create needle-thin lines of silver light down each street.
Death seemed happy, by the wordless grin he occasionally turned and settled on the four. But the passengers felt awkward in the silent and sulky town. Anna brought out her theremin to lighten the mood, and Wilson sang out in his Victorian-boy’s falsetto. Their sad song joined the rattle of wheels and hooves over cobblestone. It did not lighten the atmosphere.
They saw a rare house with open shutters - a pair of pale hands promptly slammed them with a bang as the coach passed underneath. Mr. Grey said, “Pardon, Mr. Death?”
“Yo.” The hairy man turned his greasy eyes back to Mr. Grey.
“Do you reallytruly drive a coach? In your free time? It seems an inconvenient distance between your resort and Stone-Head Town.”
“I got ways of getting around.”
“It also seems an odd mix of interests. Coach Director and Resort Manager.”
Death cackled huskily, and smoked a cigarette which he lit with a scrape of fingernails. “You’re a seven-at-one-blow dude, Mr. Grey.”
“A what?”
“Clever. To talk straight, I come here for talent. When I see a guy or a gal who fits the vibe of my place, I toss ‘em into my bag, and whisk ‘em to my little getaway.”
Mr. Grey looked for the bag mentioned. He couldn’t see it in the carriage. He said, “Isn’t that unwelcome?”
“Nah. Town gets crowded when I’m gone too long. One time I got stuck in a tree for seven-dozen eons. Should’ve seen it. Couldn’t pack a stoat more into this place if you had a giant squeezing ‘em.”
At this juncture the cart passed by one of the alleys running between the houses. The moon made no line of light within, the alley being about the shoulder-width of the cat breed from which it gets its name.
Despite the narrowness, a sudden swell of people emerged just as their coach passed. The crowd carried spades splotched with dry dirt. Mr. Grey thought they brandished their tools in a very weaponish way. The crowd surrounded the coach. Death pulled sharp on the reins and said, “Alas. What’s the big idea?”
The poltergeists ended their music. The crowd closed in with shouts of, “Slay the unnatural critters!” and, “No bewitched beasts here!” But when the crowd saw the coach’s occupants, and heard the melodies of the McDourr’s end, confusion overspread their faces. Awkward embarrassment succeeded confusion - the mob stepped back a pace from Death’s coach. They dropped their tools to the road stones in a clatter, then filled their cardigan-pockets with guilty hands.
Death said, “Can’t a permitted director take a fare without hitting mad-heavy traffic?”
One of the sour-faced folk, a woman in a thimble-mail cardigan-robe, said, “Pardon, your worship. We mistook your ghosts’ song for evil sounds.”
“I am obliged to inform you, madame, that my pulchritudinous wife and I are most accurately classified as ‘poltergeists’,” said Wilson.
“Apologies, your excellency, and I’m sure it’s no offense intended.”
Anna said, “You gooses. What did you take us for?”
The thimble-mailed woman shifted from foot to foot with an uncomfortable tinkling. At length she said, “Begging your spectralcy’s pardon. When we heard your enchantment we thought you were a cock atop a cat atop a hound atop a donkey; all crowing, mewing, barking and braying together. There’ll be no bewitched animals in our town. But you’re neither bewitched,” she took a closer look at Mr. Grey, making sure he wasn’t actually stone, “nor animals.”
“You may go on,” shouted another voice.
“Keep to the main roads, you’ll have a happier-ever-after,” warned a third.
And before the McDourr’s could give unearthly voice to their affronted feelings, or Honeydew could meet the third fellow’s threat with one of her own, or Mr. Grey could ask after Jodee, the mob slipped back through the thin alley crack. Like sweat through scaffold-boards.
Wilson McDourr huffed. He said, “Once is a miserable enough experience. But to be mistaken as such a combination of creatures thrice…”
“Well husband,” said Anna, with a glance at Mr. Grey and Honeydew. “While we’re thus stopped, us two aught venture our separate way.”
The McDourr’s rose to leave. Death said, “We’re almost at the stores. Then the hotel. Sally forth I say,” He snapped his lash, and the coach clattered once more over the stone road. The McDourr’s resumed their seats.
As they rolled into desolate streets of slightly altered character - where shop signs swung creakily on their hooks, shopkeepers stood behind murky glass fronts, and shop stalls stood unvisited on the sidewalks - Mr. Grey said, “I’m surprised this form of government’s allowed.”
He’d spoken to Honeydew, but she had her eyes busy swinging with the shop signs. Anna McDourr said, “Which form of government, Mr. Grey?”
“That’s just it. There’s no king’s bouncers.”
Wilson McDourr said, “I am given to understand that queen’s law is the prevailing one in Stone-Head Town.”
“Very well, but then where are the queen’s enforcers?” Mr. Grey tried to wave and indicate the streets, populated sparsely by civilian traffic only. He forgot his wrist was locked.
“It is a matter of ‘attitude’ in Dreamland, Mr. Grey,” said Wilson in a lecturing tone. He sat up more stiffly in his shackles. “A sentiment - beneath the growing trees, behind the carven face of unforgiving rock, in every thrice-cursed castle and every sepulchral dungeon - that whatever must pass, must pass.”
“One foot follows the other, like a stoat through snow,” added Anna.
“He who says A, must say B. That manner of being,” finished Wilson. “What necessity is there for authority, when the bolt of one’s existence was cut to its proper pattern long past?”
The coach halted before a drink stand. Honeydew had felt parched and asked Death to step down and fetch her a drink. The vendor at the stall was a fat, freckle-faced man, with a cardigan robe of sewn-together bat wings. He’d been leaning idly against his stand, but when he saw Death and his coach approaching he stood fast, and began hawking his wares in breathless voice, as though he’d been at it for ages. “Cliff Condensation! Stone-giant Spit! Crag Tears! Mist of the Sierra! Dew of the Mountain! Diet Dew of the Mountain.” Honeydew asked for Dew of the Mountain. Death undid one of her shackles and took a smoke break while she drank.
The drink merchant, contrary to his frowning face and the unwelcoming attitude they’d been warned to expect from the populace, seemed jolly. He haggled cordially with Death for the customary length of time. He told the McDourrs he didn’t know where the migration department lay. He spoke to each with an unhelpful but friendly manner.
Mr. Grey angled his head to the merchant - his position and the arm braces made it a challenge - and said, “Excuse me, Mr…?”
“Pleasure’s mine,” said the man, with the same unchanging frown and the same jovial tone.
“Do you, by chance, know any good spots for news? Or local rumors? Or any visitors in the Town?”
“Not much in the way of news here. And you’d be beleaguered to find a dive crowd willing to play rumormongers with a stranger. And as for visitors, I’ll give the account now: there’s few.”
“Well, thank you anyway.”
“How now, grey man? Was there a specific hearsay you wanted?”
“Did you ever serve a customer by the name of Jodee Coats? She looked-”
“Say no more words or be cursed,” said the vendor, with a serious expression which matched the words, and a chortle which didn’t. “I’ve seen her.”
“Is she here? Was this long ago?”
“Afraid she’s not with us anymore.”
“You don’t mean she’s-”
“Don’t look at me,” said Death before he could complete the thought. “My hands haven’t shuffled any gal named Coats.”
“She’s still existing, sir,” said the fat, freckled vendor. “But she’s not in town. May she be fortunate, wherever she is.”
“Yours is another existence she’s blessed, then?” asked Mr. Grey. His face and voice went unchanged. Honeydew alone, from their travel together, recognized his sarcasm from the choice of words.
“Blessed, sir? She stopped on her road and ordered a pebble’s worth of Crag Tears. That was all.”
“Yet you wish her special fortune.”
“She’s a fair maiden.”
“She didn’t convince you to break the Odormoats? To resist the king’s… queen’s rules?”
“She waxed a bit on her own quest. But she didn’t ask for my company. And I’d not wish to go. It’s a queer forest out there.”
“What did she say? If you don’t mind telling.”
“Don’t mind,” The portly stall-tender reached out and took the empty glass Honeydew held over the cart’s rail. As he scrubbed the vessel with a sudsy rag in dirty water, the merchant spoke of Jodee.
“Well you see sir, it was more what she didn’t say. No doubt you’ve come to know, Stone-Head Town villagers and questing ne’er-do-wells don’t meld. Us villagers have cause for keeping to ourselves. I’ll tell you. Once upon a time the Sun stopped by. A stranger in these parts. He seemed an agreeable lad. But after his leaving, we learned he was a fawner. A real two-faced donkey. We heard from other newcomers - who’d listened to the sun wax on it when he got home - that he hated our houses. Said they looked tacky. Said the hotel had bed-worms. Said the town smelled like a crypt. A mess of lies. Needless to say, the Stone-Headers never welcomed him back.
“Well Time passed, as is his way. We got on with existing. We forgot the sun affair. Then, on another occasion, The Old Wind dropped in for a spell. She was a regular customer in these parts. And it so happened that she came to flit about us, just while we were hosting another crew of nomads. Falconers, if I remember right. Both parties were pleasant on their own. But there was bad blood between them; the nomads and The Wind. The parties scrapped, the nomads left angry, The Wind swore against us. As though we Stone-Headers had caused the row! She sulks to this day, and bothers everyone she catches coming up the nose.
“Well that was two bad visits from those beyond town. And it’s said Trouble’s a snake of three heads. To make a long story a short story, the last trouble took a visitor’s shape. He came in, stole the moon from where we Stone-Headers had hung it in a tree, and tossed it to the sky. With our moon so far it’s hard to see our hands before our faces. And Dreamland candles cost mighty high treasures.
“After all that, you’ll imagine no one’s happy to see a stranger stride into Stone-Head Town. I was just the same. When I saw this young fire-haired, sapling-hauling maiden come walking up the road, no by-your-leaves, no coach… I played the old codger. She asked for my finest Crag Tears. I gave her a dram, mostly foam, and called it our best. Overcharged her too. I wanted her gone.
“But that sweet girl drank it, suds though it was. She called it delicious, even though it wasn’t. She praised our local business. Then she asked me about town, and how we carved the face, and what we did for fun. I started speaking almost against my will. We talked for a long while together, that stranger girl and me. She talked too about her quest, her ambition to change the Odormoats. Plenty about herself, but that’s the way of youth. And after she left town, I never heard a bad word of her. It made me think; maybe not every strange soul’s a mean one.
“As the saying goes: a mouse did run, this story is done. I only hope sir, you’re of the same type as miss Coats. And I wish you well on your venture.”
The McDourr’s, Honeydew, and especially Mr. Grey had craned towards the freckled merchant as he spoke. Death, however, sat smoking a cigarette and looking bored throughout the tale. When the man finished, and Mr. Grey wanted to speak, Death beat him to it. “Let’s ride!” he said, and lashed the horses.
With a clatter of headless horse’s hooves they shot along the shop-lined road. Mr. Grey had no chance to ask the man anything further about Jodee. He just had time to call back, “Thank you, Mr…?” Then they turned a corner and lost sight of the drink vendor.
“He sounded happy,” said Honeydew. She glanced at Mr. Grey.
“Unfortunately,” began Wilson McDourr, “his character was not a representation of the populace in aggregate.” Honeydew detached herself from the conversation and returned to following the swinging shop-signs on their hooks.
Anna shuffled in her seat, making the translucent chair pattern on her robe rock. “Now, now,” she admonished. “Let’s not disparage those who only choose to sit where the stork lands for them.”
“It would be a misery, love, to rear offspring in this caliginous environment.”
“Where will you go Mr. McDourr?” asked Mr. Grey.
“Wheresoever the Odormoats are at their thinnest, sir Grey.”
“But for many trees trudged past, and many moon-shapes seen, our seeking has uncovered no migration offices,” added Anna. She stifled a banshee-sob.
Wilson sniffled. “It is a shame the salesman just passed could not be more informative.”
“It is,” agreed Mr. Grey. “I’d hoped he’d have an inkling where Jodee went, since they spoke at length.”
Wilson pulled a hand through his shackle and brought it up to twist the ends of his pale mustache. His face was thoughtful.
They passed by one murky shop window showing a collection of wigged mannequin heads. The yeoman rang a church bell on the mantle and cried out the door, “Fresh re-headings! Get yourself a new do!” Honeydew wanted to see the store and asked Death to stop. The McDourrs also asked to stop, with the excuse that the Hotel probably wouldn’t have rooms for all four of them. Then Honeydew changed her mind and asked Death to drive on. Then Death told the McDourrs that he knew the hotel owner, and he’d make sure they all got rooms.
So Death drove his coach on, with three unwilling passengers, and a single ambivalent one.
Wilson turned to Mr. Grey. “Mr. Grey, I have agitated my own thoughts with your dilemma concerning miss Coats. I believe I am in possession of knowledge that may be of assistance in your locating endeavor.”
Mr. Grey looked left slowly. Then right slowly. He saw no mobs, no inky cats. He checked the building overhangs; no pianos about to drop. Mr. Grey saw no sudden surprises coming. He still didn’t trust that Wilson would succeed in speaking without interruption. He said, “Go on if you please.”
“She is of a fiery disposition, we shall agree?”
“I wouldn’t presume to judge. But I have seen her lost temper before.”
“Then I propose that she may be in pursuit of the Dreamland dragon.”
“How’s that?”
“Queen’s legend states: ‘Only a young hero wielding a verdant sword may slay the dragon in its lair, and thus earn the Dreamland crown.’”
“That seems odd wording for a law.”
“It’s accurate,” said Anna. “Ratified by the queen’s council as the truest version of the tale, just last epoch.”
“But you don’t know the location of the dragon’s lair,” guessed Mr. Grey.
“No one does. The dragon is a creature of olden days. The location of its lair, out of memory.”
“Thank you anyway. That gives us some direction.” Mr. Grey glanced at Honeydew, but she was busy chatting with a dress-shop owner as their coach rolled by.
“A sunflower robe,” Honeydew was saying. “With eyes like this one. Anything in the local style?”
The little tailor goggled at her robe. “How have you so many children?!” he asked.
“What?”
“Your golden lilies. They show the health of children. When they are fresh, your children are-”
“Haven’t got kids,” she cut him off. “It’s a stupid fish curse. Forget it.”
They drove on. Anna Asked, “Does the fish curse come from a fish witch?”
Honeydew didn’t answer. Mr. Grey said, “After a rest in the hotel, perhaps we can all grab supper - breakfast? Lunch? - together. Then we-”
But at that moment the interruption Mr. Grey had avoided earlier showed up. It took the shape of a rooster. The pied-feathered fowl sat atop its rusted likeness on one of the crooked house weathervanes. It crowed the time. Not only did the bird give the wrong time - according to Mr. Grey’s ticker - but the poltergeists panicked at its call. They sprang through their shackles, grabbed their suitcases, leapt from the moving coach before Death could intervene, and tore down a byway.
“Some people,” said Death with a shake of his head. “We just got here too.”
They pulled up outside the bone fence of a graveyard.
“This seems excessive.” Thud. “I feel I’d be more comfortable seeing the moon and stars.” Thud. “It’d be less work for you.” Thud. “So I’ll just stay unburied if that’s an option.”
Mr. Grey waited. No new clod of dirt splashed over the glass top of the coffin in which he lay, at the bottom of the hotel grave. After a tock, he heard the sheathing sound of a shovel stuck into loose soil. No accompanying dirt followed. After another tock, the gaunt, splotchy, thin-haired head of the undertaker appeared over the earthy side of the pit. Yet another tock after that, Honeydew’s flaxen head appeared on the other side. The latter gave him a reassuring nod. The former gave him a wan grin.
“‘Tis therapeutic,” said the undertaker. He barked a single laugh, his head disappeared, and another clod thumped over Mr. Grey’s view. Another fraction of glass gave way to soil crawling with slimy earthworms. Mr. Grey bent his neck at a hard angle on the velvet upholstery, and shifted his spine inside the coffin. He managed to find another space of dirt-free glass.
Honeydew looked down and got halfway through another reassuring nod. She couldn’t complete the gesture. Worry drew a thin line across her mouth. She said, “Aren’t there other lodgings in town?”
Mr. Grey heard another short, sharp laugh. Another clod of dirt swooped down to lessen the sky. “The Lichyard Lay’s a best-rated stay,” sang the undertaker in an off-key jingle. “Do you want to insult our good friend Death?”
Another wormy lump of dirt splashed over Mr. Grey’s viewing-hole. He shifted his way quickly to another. He spoke up to Honeydew; his words tumbling out fast, and muffled by glass and dirt.
“It’s only a one-sleep stay.” Thud. “Then we can check with the shopkeepers.” Thud. “See if any know anything about Jodee.” Thud. “Or the dragon’s lair.” Thud. “You can buy a robe.” Thud. “Everything will-” Thud.
As Mr. Grey spoke faster and faster, the undertaker seemed to quicken his shoveling. Mr. Grey found his world reduced to a small, humid box. The only escape; one, tiny diamond of glass through which to see the world.
Honeydew said, “I’m not tired, now that I consider it. I’ll just find a bench, or a plot of grass. Are you tired?” she asked with a glance at Mr. Grey through the little diamond. She looked back across the pit to the undertaker. “You can probably just dig him up.”
Mr. Grey saw the shovel pause, a bladeful of dirt hovering just over his pinhole of glass. Then it retracted. He heard the dirt dumped off to the side. He saw the shovel extended again over the pit, handle-first this time, toward Honeydew. He heard the undertaker say, “If you want to dig him up, go ahead. Disrespects our Stone-Head Town tradition. But such are haughty people.”
Honeydew reached for the shovel. Mr. Grey cleared his throat and she paused. She glanced down again. Worry still creased her lips. “Well?” she asked.
Mr. Grey reached a hand into his pocket. He felt the cool ticker casing against his fingers, and the tiny thud of each passing tock. He tried focusing on the ticker, and not on the hot air, or the way the cushions seemed to rub his skin like silky eels, or the way the tiny fragment of light seemed to solder his pores shut. He spoke to Honeydew with measured pauses.
“It’s alright.” Tock. “It’s quite comfortable.” Tock. “Good dreams, I’m sure.” Tock. “It will be alright…”
Honeydew cast a doubtful look. But she withdrew her hand. Mr. Grey heard the undertaker bark another short laugh. He saw the shovel glide from view. He heard it shink into soil. He saw the shovel reappear. He saw it tilt. He saw the last wormy clump of earth drop. He watched the sky disappear.
Mr. Grey’s world became a six foot, by two foot, by one-and-a-half foot, close, warm, silky, blind box. He held his ticker tight. He tried to line up his breaths very carefully and slowly with the tocks.
But then he noticed his heart. Felt it jump rates by a fraction. Then another fraction. Then his heartrate doubled. Then it tripled. His heart seemed to radiate. It filled the box with heat. It made the air denser. It made his breath faster and made the space darker and made the walls closer and made his throat close and made his skin ooze and made his arms twitch and made his legs twitch and made…
And then a cool blast of air struck Mr. Grey on his nose. A fresh and sweet-smelling air, like a day in a Starharbor park, with the jelly light on the hills. The sound of gently-lapping sea waves drifted in, through the air-pipe at the side. An ASMR-soft voice came in beside his ear.
“Lay your head down. Sleeeeeeep. Listen to the waves. Sleeeeeeep. Let the soft breeze wipe the worries away. Sleeeeeeep.”