11
HITHER AND THITHER
course (verb) to hunt, particularly to hunt
monsters; (noun) the hunt itself, usually referred to as a coursing
party, or in such phrases as “to go on a course.” A course is,
obviously, a dangerous affair. One undertaken lightly will always
result in the doom of some, if not all, of those involved. A
prospective courser is always advised to take at least one skold
and one leer—or, if they are unavailable, a quarto of lurksmen,
even a navigator or wayfarer, and a hefty weight of potives and
skold-shot. Not to be confused with “corse,” meaning a dead body, a
corpse.
THOUGH Rossamünd was wanting to ask
Sebastipole of the coursing of the Trought, the leer soon left him
and Numps, saying that he was well overdue for an interview with
the Lamplighter-Marshal.
Numps, wide-eyed, watched the leer leave and then
bent to his labors once more, humming as he cleaned. Rossamünd did
not know how to talk to Numps. He was afraid to frighten the
nervous glimner again and so he moved slowly, looking for work to
do. He found a rag, sat on an empty chest on the other side of the
bright great-lamp and silently began to polish
lantern-windows.
Wrapped in the canvas sacks for warmth, Numps did
not complain. He did not even acknowledge Rossamünd. Instead he
took every pane the prentice cleaned and polished each one again
just as fastidiously as if it had never been worked, adding it to
the stack of other lustrous panes. Frustrating as this was,
Rossamünd did not grumble but kept at the task. Every so often he
would lean down and check Numps’ feet, to make certain no blood
showed through the bandages, or chide the glimner carefully if,
from habit, he should try to use his foot to grip or hold. They
kept at this for an hour or more till he accidentally grasped at
the same dirty pane the glimner grasped from the top of the
diminishing stack.
“Oh” was all Numps said, letting the pane go and
humbly placing his hand in his lap.
“Sorry, Mister Numps . . . and I’m sorry about
before. For scaring you and making you drop the glass and cut your
feet.”
Numps must have rarely received an apology, for
with each contrite word that Rossamünd uttered, the glimner
interjected with a blink and an odd, hesitant “Oh.”
“That’s just silly poor Numps forgetting his-self.
All a-flipperty-gibberty since Mister ’Pole found me swimming in
red.” He hung his head. “I’ve never been as I was.” He sat like
this for several minutes, Rossamünd not daring to move or
interrupt. “Time to make seltzer!” Numps suddenly straightened,
ready to get to his feet.
“No! Mister Numps!” Rossamünd lurched to his
feet, forgetting his caution in his concern for the man’s wounded
sole. For an instant he feared he might have spooked the man again,
but Numps just looked at him, puzzled, holding himself between
sitting and standing. “You must have a care to stay off your bad
foot. Hop on your good foot like Mister Sebastipole said, till
Doctor Crispus has declared you whole.”
Offering himself as a small crutch, the prentice
helped Numps out of his seat and guided the limping glimner over to
where he pointed: a collection of barrels and chests gathered in a
corner between the wooden wall of the store and one of the
tool-cluttered shelves.
“They say I’m struck with horrors,” the glimner
said, pressing down heavily on Rossamünd with each hop, “and I know
I’m not the old Numps, just poor Numps now; but I still remember
how to mix the seltzer—they still come to me to make it ’cause no
one makes it as well. I might be rummaged all about up here,” he
said, patting himself on the side of his head, “them pale runny
monsters saw to that, but that don’t mean I have forgotten.”
Numps prized off the lid of one barrel, releasing a
distinct tang into the stuffy lantern store, and Rossamünd
immediately recognized the sealike odor of sweet brine—the
beginning of seltzer water. Humming tunefully, the glimner began to
take all manner of chemicals from chests and boxes close to
hand.With precise care he dripped, scooped, tapped and tipped each
part into the barrel of brine. At each addition he stirred with
slow, fine movements; first one turn of the clock then the other
for set counts that he spoke under his breath. “Once clockingwise,
fours contrawise . . .”
Rossamünd knew the basic constitution of seltzer
water: spirit-of-cadmia, bluesalts, chordic vinegar and wine-dilute
penthil-salts. He had been shown this by Seltzterman Humbert, and
at first Numps followed the recipe properly but then he put in only
half the chordic vinegar, left out the penthil altogether and began
to add other things—unusuallooking things. Of what Rossamünd saw,
he recognized a dash of ethulate and pinches of soursugar, plus a
fine sandy powder that smelled like the vinegar sea and sludge that
looked ever so much like the muckings of a gastrine.
“What are these for, Mister Numps?” the prentice
inquired of the extra parts. “I have seen seltzer made—Seltzerman
1st Class Humbert has shown us, but he never added these.”
“Oh . . . ah . . . Mister Humble-burt is good at
the simple seltzer, but this is our own seltzer. Better seltzer for
Numps’ friends. Numps and his clever old friend, we figured this,
figured it out before poor Numps’ poor clever old friend went
swimming in his red too. No one else knows how to do it right and
his clever old friend is gone now but Numps still remembers; makes
the bloom bloom it does, good for Numps’ friends.”
“What friends, Mister Numps?” Rossamünd was finding
it hard to follow the thread of wandering talk. “Do you look after
all the bloom?”
The glimner became silent at this, and would say no
more on the subject of bloom or seltzer or friends new or old.
Rather he kept pointedly at his mixing until he had made three kegs
full of seltzer—smelling far more rich and full than seltzer
usually did.
As the day waned someone came a-calling. At first
they simply heard her. “Numps! Numps!” was the demand. “Hullo
there, my darling muddle-head! Help me git this glass through yer
door!”
“Oh, oh, oh,” fretted Numps, up to his bicep in
seltzer. “The barrow woman is here. The barrow woman.”
“I’ll go.You stay here.”
Rossamünd answered the shout in the glimner’s
stead, stepping down the avenue of shelves to discover a woman
wrestling a heavy load through Door 143. She wore a buff-leather
apron over her maid’s clothes and was towing a barrow stacked high
with panes and lantern-windows. When this laboring lady saw a
well-presented prentice-lighter she pulled up short and smiled.
“Oh, hello, my lovely.”
“Hello,” Rossamünd replied. “May I take that?” He
had gripped the barrow by the handles before she could reply.
“What a precious little mite you are!” she
exclaimed. “Doing my job for me? And grateful I am too.” She leaned
toward him and whispered conspiratorially, “That seltzerman is a
bit too gone in the intellectuals for my liking. I don’t much enjoy
having to come down here. Folks avoid him, you know.”
“No need then for you to see him today, mother
labor,” Rossamünd replied peevishly.
The woman gave Rossamünd a sharp, appraising look.
“Ye must have done summat right bad to be sent here, lad.” She
peered closely, seeking the fatal flaw. “Ye’ve got to take him in
hand, pet, if ye’re going to get anything done with him,” she said.
“He’s naught but a limpling-head,” she finished loudly, for Numps
to hear.
Rossamünd felt a surge of anger. He almost forgot
his manners as she bid good day, scowling after the woman as she
left.
With her departure Rossamünd and Numps set to
stacking then polishing these new deliveries and kept at this for
what remained of the day. Neither spoke, and there came no other
noise but the chink of picking up and putting down till mains was
rung and Rossamünd realized he had missed middens, entirely
forgotten.With a bow he went to hurry off. “Good evening to you,
Mister Numps,” he said as he left. “I hope your foot heals right
quick. Don’t walk on it nor use it for any work, please. Wait for
Doctor Crispus to see you.”
Numps blinked at him, nodded—with a small, cryptic
smile lighting his face—and said, “Will you come back tomorrow and
check poor Numps’ poor foot?”
“I will, Mister Numps.”
Rossamünd returned to the manse, wishing he had met
this fascinating fellow well before today.
The other prentice-lighters were not due back from
Silvernook till after mains—part of the vigil-day privilege.
Rossamünd took himself to the mess hall to eat alone. There he
found Threnody back from interviews with her mother and by the
fire, sitting on a tandem chair reading a book—a novel no less,
that most frivolous of frivolous things. Two small pots, one of
delicious muttony-greasy and one with gray pease, bubbled over the
fire for any who had stayed. On the table there was also some
hard-tack and apples still untouched from middens, and piping
Domesday pudding. As he was serving mutton into a shallow square
pannikin, Threnody walked wearily over and did the same. She sat
before Rossamünd, full of mystery and reticence.
Rossamünd broached the hush. “I thought you’d eat
with your mother.”
“So did she.” Threnody smiled sourly, then
added, “I told her I was a lighter now and was duty bound to mess
with my fellows-in-arms.”
“She came a fair way to see you. Did she not
insist?”
Bent over her food, the girl looked at him sharply
through her brows. “She ranted and railed, as always.”
“What did she say?” Rossamünd knew he had asked too
much as soon as he said the words.
Threnody stared at him owlishly. “Insufficient to
detain me . . . clearly.”
Muteness descended and stretched out into a heavy
awkwardness. The cooking fire crackled in the hearth. Merry fife
music, distant, rhythmic stomping and timely claps drifted through
the mess-hall door. This was the ruckus of soused lampsmen and
pediteers cozy in their own mess-room making happy on their
vigil-day rest.
Rossamünd sighed. Threnody was hard work.
“And Pandomë—is she healing?”
Threnody bowed her head.
Have I said too much again? Rossamünd
wondered.
“She . . . recovers,” the girl replied eventually.
“She will return with Mother though both physic and surgeon agree
that she is unlikely to fight again.” For a breath she looked
truly, openly sad. “Do you think I’m to blame, Rossamünd
Bookchild?”
Rossamünd hesitated. “Blame?”
“For Pandomë’s hurts!” Threnody stared hard at him.
“For—for Idesloe’s death . . .”
He was unsure of how to soothe her sorrow.
“I returned from Sinster’s sanguinariums little
more than eight months ago,” she continued, her whispered words
spilling, wide eyes imploring. “I have only been allowed to
begin using my new ‘skills’ in the last month.Yet, I am a wit: what
else could I do? I had no pistols. We were attacked. I did my part,
defended my clave, did duty to them firstmost! The others
were all too battered by the crash. I had to act! If I had been
made a fulgar I would have done better, and better yet as a
pistoleer—you saw how frank my shots were against that umbergog
thing. It was not some self-centered display of valor. Was it? Did
I set us all to risk like Mother insists I must have?”
This was more than Rossamünd wanted to
answer.
“Practice makes it, miss,” he tried, feeling very
inadequate. “It’s as my dormitory master used to say: learn it as
rote and it’ll work freely like hearth-softened butter, if you get
my meaning.”
Impatience flickered across Threnody’s face. “I’m
not sure that I do.” Her earnest openness vanished like the
snap of a closing lid.
“Well—I was—” Rossamünd started and did not know
where to go—trying not to be rude, he concluded to
himself.
Threnody arched an eyebrow.
“Will you be returning to your mother this
evening?” Rossamünd quickly changed tack.
“No, she has said all she wanted to say—and more
besides,” Threnody answered sourly. “We are done. Fortunately she
will leave again tomorrow and take Dolours and dear Pandomë back to
Herbroulesse.”
With a thump the prentices, soused and swaggering
from their vigil-day excursion, bundled into the mess hall.
The strange, strained conversation ceased.
“Hoy there, you sobersides! You should have seen
it!” Punthill Plod effused.
“Seen what?” Threnody returned icily.
“Aye, Rosey, you missed a real bust-up,” bragged
Arabis, completely ignoring Threnody. “A carriage was attacked by
some nickers—horses dead, lentermen dead, passengers dead.”
“Just like we saw on lantern-watch,” Plod
continued.
“I heard them say in town that it was done by some
nasty grinning blightlings,” Crofton Wheede added.
Rossamünd’s milt went cold.
Grinnlings?
“That company of lesquins we saw camped just a mile
farther down was not much use to them poor folks, was it?” said a
prentice named Foistin Gall.
Rossamünd’s ears pricked up at the mention of
lesquins, those gaudily dressed sell-swords—the best, most arrogant
fighters, who gathered into legions and sold themselves to fight in
the petty wars of the states.
“What are they doing there?” Threnody
frowned.
“People are saying because we can’t stop the
baskets on the Wormway that the Gainway is under threat!” said
Onion Mole in awe.
“Not as under threat as that sweet li’l dolly-mop
at the Drained Mouse, not from the looks you were giving her,
Moley,” guffawed Twörp stupidly, and several boys brayed in drunken
delight.
Threnody gave them all a single dirty look and
left.
Mind spinning with memories of Licurius collapsing
under a press of grinning bogles, Rossamünd was not long in
following.
The routine of the next day began as it always
did, with the ritual wake-up cry, hurried dressing and stomping out
to line up for morning forming on the Cypress Walk by the side of
the manse. There Grindrod confirmed the attack on the carriage
between the fortress and Silvernook, everyone slaughtered. He
quickly moved on to properly inform the prentices that the coursing
party had returned the previous day while the boys were living it
large in Silvernook. The coursers’ homecoming had been somber. They
were less five dogs, including the leader Drüker, and Griffstutzig
was badly hurt. An ambuscadier was dead, the badly wounded Josclin
borne back on a litter. These were bitter blows indeed after
Bellicos’ death. Even mortally hurt, the harried umbergog had
proved a terrible adversary, trapped in a hollow on the western
flanks of the Tumblesloe Heap far to the north. It was slain at
last by the chemistry of Josclin and a final, fatal shot from
Sebastipole’s deadly long-rifle. The severed head of the vanquished
monster had been dragged all the way back by the mules.
The prentices did not know how to react to this:
was it good news? Was it bad?
Grindrod also advertised that that very night in
the Hall of Pageants there would be the puncting—the marking with
the monster’s blood—of those who had had a hand in slaying the
Herdebog Trought. Collected from the dead umbergog at the time of
its slaying, the cruor was in the care of Nullifus Drawk. He was
apparently eager and ready to mark the monster’s killers. Rossamünd
did not want to go. He had lost his fascination for cruorpunxis.
Their gaining was surrounded by too much sorrow and confusion. He
well understood why his old dormitory master was ashamed of the
tattoo he wore.
After breakfast the prentices were set to more
marching. Rain set in, a gray shimmering swathe, and
dripping-drenched they formed up along the side of the gravel drive
to mark the Lady Vey’s otherwise unfeted departure. “Present
arms!” came the order. Next to Rossamünd, Threnody obeyed,
staring fixedly ahead, chin high, a sardonic half smile barely
hidden. For her part, as the dyphr clattered by, the august ignored
her daughter and the twin-file of prentices with her, her neck held
stiff and chin raised.
As mother, as daughter, Rossamünd
observed.
For 2nd morning instructions the prentices went to
the lectury for lantern workings with Seltzerman 1st Class Humbert.
Rossamünd liked the subject: he actually understood and admired the
mechanism of a seltzer lamp and the constitution of seltzer water
itself. This study was a relief from marching and evolutions and
targets. In fact, and despite himself, he welcomed the safety of
routine. The last week had been as event-filled as ever he wanted.
Too much adventure left him craving easy predictability. With a
contented lift in his regular-step Rossamünd entered the lectury
carrying stylus, books and lark-lamp—a small replica of a
great-lamp given to all the prentices. Rossamünd was intrigued by
the curious way its covers folded open upon many hinges, fascinated
with the down-scaled workings revealed within, which were just like
those that operated the real lights of the road. He paid close
attention to all that was taught, but most of the other prentices
could not have given two geese about the what or how or why of a
great-lamp’s internal parts. Humbert noticed neither. He simply
droned on.
Rossamünd had quickly learned that lampsmen
naturally, though unfairly, regarded seltzermen as failed lighters
who only ever ventured out into the wilds with the sun, and then
only when need demanded. They were appreciated, certainly—repairing
the great-lamps was necessary work—but not respected. Consequently,
it was with mixed gratitude that Rossamünd received Mister
Humbert’s uncharacteristic praise when, in the face of his fellow
prentices’ ignorance, he speedily identified a limp, pale yellow
frond the seltzerman held up as “glimbloom drying out and past
saving, Mister Humbert.”
“Correct!” the seltzerman returned. “How long can
the glimbloom survive out of seltzer before it reaches this
irrevocably parched state?”
“No more than a day, Mister Humbert.”
“Well, Master Bookchild, you know what you’re about
with them parts.” The seltzerman 1st class brightened. “It takes
just this kind of nous to keep these plants working. We’ll make a
seltzerman out of you yet.”
“Aye,” Rossamünd heard muttered behind him, “or
maybe you’d make a good weed-keeper, Rosey?” There was the sound of
soft laughter.
Rossamünd did not look around.
However, Threnody did. “Better to be good for
something than a good-for-nothing bustle-chaser,” she hissed,
unable to tell between good-natured jape or insult.
“Young lady!” Mister Humbert called
long-sufferingly. “You might be the only lass at prenticing, but
don’t think you’ll have special concession from me. Please turn
around and refrain from disturbing the others.”
Skipping the sit-down meal at middens, Rossamünd
grabbed some slices of pong and hurried to Door 143 in the Low
Gutter and his promised visit with Numps. The Gutter was busier on
a normal day, and Rossamünd had to negotiate the bustle of laborers
and servants and soldiers. He entered the lantern store quietly and
heard speaking: not one of the soft monologues of Numps, but the
voice of a learned man.
Rossamünd became very still and listened.
“. . . Poor old Numps wouldn’t tolerate Mister
Swill, eh?” the voice declared. It sounded like Doctor Crispus. He
must have returned from his curative tour. “I must say I can barely
compass the man myself: entirely too wily, all secrets and
heavy-lidded looks and smelling of some highly questionable
chemistry . . .”
Although he was aware that it would be proper to
make his presence known to the speaker, a guilty fascination held
Rossamünd and he remained tense and quiet.
“. . . Coming with his uncertain credentials, when
all the while a proper young physic might have been satisfactorily
summoned from the fine physacteries of Brandenbrass or Quimperpund.
A product of the clerical innovations of that Podious Whympre.
Everything in triplicate and quadruplicate and quintuplicate now!
One thousand times the paperwork for the most trifling things, and
all requiring our Earl-Marshal’s mark. How the poor fellow bears
with the smother of chits and ledgers is beyond me: my own pile
near wastes half my day!”
As Rossamünd moved to the end of the aisle he found
it was indeed Doctor Crispus, sitting on a stool and ministering to
the dressings on the glimner’s foot with intense concentration. He
had examined Rossamünd on the prentice’s very first day as a
lamplighter, and had had naught to do with him since. Numps was
sitting meekly on a barrel waiting for the physician to finish. He
looked up at Rossamünd before the lad had made a sound and smiled
in greeting. The physician himself had still not noticed
Rossamünd.
“Ah, Doctor Crispus?” the prentice tried, shuffling
his feet to add emphasis.
With a start, the physician stood and quickly
turned, catching at his satchel as it slid from his lap.
“I have come to help Mister Numps again,” Rossamünd
added.
“Cuts and sutures, lad!” Crispus exclaimed with a
flustered cough. “You gave me a smart surprise!” A towering,
slender man—Doctor Crispus must have been the tallest fellow in the
whole fortress and probably of all Sulk End and the Idlewild too—he
was sartorially splendid in dark gray pinstriped silk, wearing his
own snow-white hair slicked and jutting from the back of his head
like a plume. He wore small spectacles the color of ale-bottles,
and a sharp, intelligent glimmer in his eye boded ill for any
puzzle-headed notions. “Ah, hmm . . .” The man composed himself.
“Master Bookchild, is it not?”
“Aye, Doctor,” the prentice answered with a
respectful bow. “At your service, sir,” he added.
“And so you have been, Master Bookchild,” the
physician said, clicking his heels and giving a cursory nod, “of
service to me, and more so to this poor fellow here, as I
understand it.” He gave a single, paternal pat on Numps’
shoulder.
Numps hung his head and smiled a sheepish
smile.
Rossamünd did not know what to say, so he simply
said, “Aye, Doctor.”
“See, Mister Doctor Crispus, see: Mister Rossamünd
has come back again and Numps has a new new old friend.They let him
in, did you know? They never let my friends like him in before, did
they? Maybe one day they’ll let the sparrow-man in too?”
Crispus smiled ingratiatingly. “Yes, Numps, yes. I
see.”
Baffled but deeply gratified by this reception,
Rossamünd asked, “How is your foot today, Mister Numps?” The
bandages seemed still tightly bound and in their right place.
“Oh, poor Numps’ poor foot,” Numps sighed. “It
hurts, it itches. But Mister Doctor Crispus told me well stern this
morn that I was to leave it be . . . so I leave it be.” He
wiggled his toes.
“And so you must.” Distractedly the physician
pulled a fob from his pocket. “Ah! Middens is already this ten
minutes gone,” he declared. “I must eat like any man jack.”
DOCTOR CRISPUS
“Doctor Crispus?” Rossamünd dared.
“Yes, Master Bookchild, quickly now: middens is not
the meal to be missed. Breakfast maybe, mains surely—but never
middens.” Crispus took off his glasses and dabbed at them with the
hem of his sleek frock coat.
“Was Mister Numps right not to want to go to
Swill?” Rossamünd inquired.
The physician nearly blushed. “Oh . . . Heard my
complaints, did you?” He paused thoughtfully for several breaths.
“Please disregard an unguarded moment. Those were just professional
frustrations requiring a little letting. It’s a small understanding
between Numps and I—whenever we meet: I run away at the mouth, he
listens. That being so,” Doctor Crispus carefully continued, “I
would rather you came to me with your ills, or the dispensurist or
even Obbolute if I’m incommunicado; or just go sick until I return,
than put yourself into the hands of that hacksaw.” With a cough
Crispus looked Rossamünd square in the eye. “I would thank you not
to say any more of that which you have overheard.”
Rossamünd ducked his head, going shy from the
confidence this eminent adult was putting in him. “Not a word,
Doctor.” He nodded gravely.
“How-be-it, eating is overdue.” Doctor Crispus
pointed at Numps’ legs. “I have applied new bandages but that is
all: your use of the siccustrumn was exactly right. The lacerations
are deep but the potive has been well applied and is doing the
healing work far better than any I could now. You have been given
charge over a salumanticum for good reason,
prentice-lighter.”
Rossamünd bowed again, unable to hide his grin of
delight.
“Enough now, food awaits.” Doctor Crispus gathered
up his satchel and stray instruments. “After that it’s back to that
stout fellow, Josclin—may his skies seldom cloud.”
“Is he mending, Doctor?” Rossamünd ventured.
“If you are a wagering man, Master Bookchild,”
Crispus said as he began his exit, “I would put my haquins and
carlins on Mister Josclin’s full recovery! Good diem to you and
good diem to you, Mister Numps. I shall return in a few days to
ensure your clever foot—as you call it—is still mending. I have
seen you return from the very doors of death, my man.Your foot will
not unduly trouble you.”
With that the physician hustled out of the lantern
store.
Numps immediately began cleaning panes. “Mister
Doctor Crispus and Mister ’Pole doesn’t know all what happened.”
The glimner did not look up, but spoke into his own lap.
There was a long pause.
“Doesn’t know what?” the prentice pressed as gently
as he could.
“He didn’t tell it like things happened . . .” The
glimner went on. “I didn’t go a-crawling back to the lamppost . .
.”
Realizing what Numps was talking about, Rossamünd
leaned a little closer.
“I remember . . . Even now when I sleep I remember.
Poor Numps was dead in his puddle of red, no crawling about for
him. It was the little sparrow-man that helped me.”
Rossamünd’s attention prickled. “The little
sparrow-man, Mister Numps?” he asked very very quietly. This was
the type of talk that could get you branded “sedorner.”
“Yes, yes.” Numps smiled, looking up at last. “They
might have got my arm to gnaw on, but they didn’t get all of poor
Numps. It was the little sparrow-man that fought the pale, runny
men—”
“I heard you were hurt by rever-men!”
“Oh aye, aye! Pale, runny men ripping us all to
stuff and bits and that little sparrow-man came and tore
them limb from limb and saved me—my first new old friend. He
plugged all the pains with weeds and stopped the red from its
flow-flow-flowing . . . Fed me dirty roots. That made me feel
safe.”
“That little sparrow-man?” Rossamünd
repeated.
“Aye, this big”—still gripping a pane, Numps
adumbrated a creature of short stature with his hand—“and with a
large head like a sparrow’s, a-blink-blink-blink.”
A hunch tickled at the back of Rossamünd’s mind.
Could it be the same creature? “I think I have seen him
myself,” he said.
Numps became all attention, and he too bent forward
in his seat.
“Not a long time ago I spied him,” Rossamünd
continued, “on the side of the Gainway going down to High Vesting,
a nuglung with a sparrow’s head all dark about the eyes and white
on his chest, blinking at me from a bush.”
A little taken aback, Numps blinked quickly. “Yes
yes, Cinnamon—he helped me! I reckon he’s got more names than I’ve
got space in my limpling head to count, he’s been about for so, so
long . . . Long-living monsters with long lists of names.”
Cinnamon, Rossamünd marveled. “How do you
know this, Mister Numps?” he whispered.
“Hmm, well, because he told me,” Numps answered
simply. “Cinnamon is poor Numps’ friend too, see, ’cause it was him
that beat the runny men.”
Rossamünd felt something between awe and a
habitual, thoughtless horror. “You are friends with a
nuglung?” he breathed, reflexively looking over his shoulder
for unwelcome listeners.
Numps grinned. “Ah-huh. Cinnamon said he was come
from the sparrow-king who lives down in the south hills. He keeps
an eye out for old Numps, sends his little helpers to watch.”
“The sparrow-king?” Rossamünd scratched his face in
bewilderment. His thoughts reeled at the thought of a monster-lord
living near.
“Yes yes,” Numps enthused. “The Duke of Sparrows,
the sparrow-duke; he has lots of names too.
The Sparrowling
Is an urchin-king
Who rules from courts of trees.
He guards us here
From the Ichormeer
And keeps folks in their ease.”
Is an urchin-king
Who rules from courts of trees.
He guards us here
From the Ichormeer
And keeps folks in their ease.”
“Have you seen the Duke of Sparrows, Mister
Numps?”
Numps shook his head. “But I would like to,
though.”
“So would I,” Rossamünd admitted.
“But you can see him anytime, Mister Rossamünd!”
The glimner pulled a perplexed face. “All the old friends would be
your friends, wouldn’t they?”
The young prentice hesitated. “All the old
friends? What do you mean, Mister Numps?”
“Yes, yes! My poor limpling head—the nuggle-lungs
and glammergorns and the other old friends.”
“I—I have one old friend such as this,” Rossamünd
dared. “His name is Freckle. He is a glamgorn who helped me when we
were trapped in a boat with a rever-man. We set Freckle
free.”
Numps listened to this short telling with growing
intensity. At its conclusion he grinned rapturously and did a
little sit-down dance, chiming,
“Yes yes, you set him free,
trapped in gaol is no place to be.
trapped in gaol is no place to be.
. . . you are a good friend indeed for Numps to
have who sets his fellows loose from traps. Good for Freckle
too.”
“I don’t like to tell anyone about him,” Rossamünd
warned. “You should not say either, Mister Numps, about Freckle or
Cinnamon. Most people don’t like those who are kind to
nickers.”
Numps’ enthusiasm vanished. “I remember that folks
hate the nuggle-lungs.” He nodded glumly. “And the hobble-possums
and all the gnashers, friend or bad. I remember that them that talk
with them nor think them friends are hated too. Don’t be a-worrying
and a-fretting, I won’t say naught ’bout Cinnamon nor Freckle, and
I’ll not say naught ’bout you neither.”
They set to polishing panes again, Numps redoing
Rossamünd’s as he had done the day before.This time the prentice
did not mind. He was already being wooed by the
timber-and-seltzer-perfumed ease of the lantern store, the rumble
of rain on its shingle roof adding a merry, monotonous melody. It
was with profound reluctance that he returned to his usual tasks at
middens’ end.