Pence Read online

  Chapter XII

  The gardener ended his story without punctuation, but Pence interpreted the quiet period that followed as suspense before the hand-in-hand inevitability of love unkinging fate. He sat forward, thrumming the penny and staring at the remainder of the once-charmed heart carved in the stump.

  “So? What happened?” he finally asked.

  The gardener considered. “Well… I suppose you did.”

  Pence looked from the stump to the back of the penny to the old man’s left hand. “You are the boy?” he asked with a voice thinly skimmed over his fascination.

  “I was the boy,” corrected the gardener.

  “So that’s your name–Gee? Ha! Well, gee!” Pence whooped with laughter.

  “No. The name is passed on.”

  “And she is Pea?” Pence pressed, holding up the penny as though it was all so simple. “I like that name. Speaks highly of her parents–obviously well-grounded persons. Well, except for the evil King, I suppose.”

  “No one holds her name. It is gone, along with the boy’s. It is the symmetry of the story you need to tune your mind to. There is a lesson here.”

  “Hmmm,” Pence buzzed aloud. The sun was more than a quarter past its peak and burning squarely into the boy’s gemstones under the brim of the moondaisy.

  “Your thoughts?” asked the gardener.

  “It wasn’t entirely as boring as I thought it would be. At least there was some good bloodshed.”

  “Thank you, Pence,” said the old man, nodding courteously. “The pleasure was all mine.”

  “Good,” said Pence. “Lesson learned.”

  “And what is that?” asked the old man.

  “The Prince is the bad guy. Life isn’t fair. Wishes don’t come cheap. Holding hands with a girl too long will leave you broken-hearted.”

  Pence flipped the penny heads-up and ran his fingers along the engraving of the Princess–under her chin, around her cheek, dawdling on her ear. His hands were the perfect size for her. As he traced her form, his eyes turned to the sun and he frowned.

  “What troubles you, my boy?”

  Pence looked to the old man, alarmed. “Are you serious? Everything troubles me! Your whole story was nothing but trouble! To weigh what the Sands of Time have stripped from you! Where are the Scales of Justice? In the vegetable patch we had peace. In the patch we had order, and everybody stayed in a row. But this! This is outrageous. Didn’t anyone tell the King what his scaramouch son had done? Arrghh,” Pence bellowed like a grizzled pirate, “but the Prince has accrued a steep debt. I say we take that axe of his and lop off his ruddy boll–”

  “Pence! Mind your language, my boy.” The old man waited for him to settle. “Although I feel the same way, incidentally,” he tacked on a moment after.

  Pence kicked the dirt, ill-pleased. “What in the hills happened to the Princess? Did she marry? This is outrageous! If the birds failed to find her, can the wind not tell you the way?” He lowered his voice to a murderous hush, “And what of our nemesis, the nefarious Prince? Have the Axes of Symmetry seen to his demise?”

  The gardener’s brow slumped as he answered, “Of the Prince, I have heard from precisely one hundred guests no untainted account, but it seems to be rather widely agreed upon that he never took the Throne; a fuller history of things probably does not even exist anymore in the halls of this skeletal kingdom.” The old man drew a patient breath like a bucket of fresh water pulled from the well, a task he savored. “There is gossip in the wind from long ago that he made his going down a dark road. However, in the interest of remaining fair, there is just as much of the same tripe for sale with my name attached. Ingrown things, rumors,” he concluded with masticating distaste.

  “He never took the Throne? Then who? The Princess, maybe?” Pence worked zealously to deduce the answer. “A long-lost twin? That would be symmetrical, right?”

  The old man shook his head.

  “A brother from another mother?”

  “Mercy, no.”

  Pence’s head vibrated back and forth with the effort of his calculations. “Did the King pen a secret will of last rights, leaving the entire kingdom to his best-favored but illegitimate three-legged horse? Oh, wait–that’s not a symmetry. Dang, this is tricky.”

  “No one took the Throne, Pence.”

  “No one? But that’s outrageous!”

  “When the King’s reign ebbed–and this is long, long ago, mind you–the kingdom… it became a dangerous place. Laws are not forged by the Crown today; they are made wherever one man is meaner and stronger than his neighbor. That is all you need know.”

  Pence nodded approvingly, tapped the side of his nose in a kind of secret signal to the old man’s left foot, and waved his hand for the gardener to continue.

  “Now, there are happy corners left on the map and decent people–so say those I have been fortunate enough to welcome here, from time to time. But the roads that divide the good are long and dry and there is no faith in this season of man. I do not know what you will find out there ‘midst these lost hills.”

  “What became of our Princess?” Pence demanded. “You said that my heart told you that she was still alive, and I feel her, too! That must be what love is, my heart confirming her!” he sang, hovering on his tiptoes with bliss. His face fell suddenly. “But where is she? You said you hosted travelers–you must have asked them what providence delivered her. Did she marry? Did she never escape? Or send a note that said she still likes you? And what of the penny? What does it all mean?”

  “I… I know not whether she loves me, or where she is… No guest of mine has heard her story, and I have spoken to you of the birds. Even the wind carries no fragment of her fate and no sound but the waves when I ask, as if I put an ordinary conch to my ear.” The gardener’s voice suddenly cracked, sick with age and sorrow and he cried like an old tree creaking, “Where is she? Why is there no report of her?”

  Pence observed the old man with the natural concern that was cut across his brow. “Surely the Prince will be able to put answers to all of that,” he stated bluntly, all at once standing up and brushing himself off with no shortage of pomp and pageantry. “And you’ve learned nothing else for a hundred years?”

  “Only what I’ve learned from the stump.”

  “What can a stump teach a man?” asked Pence, adjusting his cape.

  “If you know how to listen, the stump will teach you many things. It taught me that if you love something but cannot go to it, then it must come to you. It taught me how to wait. The stump is wise.”

  Pence nodded respectfully, straightened his sunhat, and walked over to the path nearest the gardener’s right arm, opposite the direction he had taken earlier in the afternoon. He held his chin high and made as if to leave without another word.

  “Pence, where are you going? What’s gotten into you, boy?”

  “Nowhere. Nothing. I’m just going to zip outside real quick and ask him where she is.” Pence pointed a thumb back over his shoulder, toward the path, as if that explained everything.

  The gardener shrugged–a speech-smitten request for elaboration.

  “The Prince!” cried Pence. “I’m going to go talk to the bloody Prince!” He turned and started boldly down the path. “I’ll be right back.”

  The gardener watched him go, caught off guard, but quickly snapped to his senses and called, “Pence! Wait! Wait, my boy. How is it that you come to say the Prince is outside? The world beyond the fence is much bigger than you might think.”

  “Ha, good one!” Pence shouted back without stopping. “You crack me up, old man. I’ll be fine. As a gentleman of fancy, and being much wiser than I was in my errant youth, outsmarting the Prince is going to be as easy as one, two… well, I don’t know what comes next, since you’ve neglected to educate me properly. But it’s going to be easy, I’m certain of it.”

  “Pence! Wait, enlighten me, please. Please, just a moment before you go rushing off into the unknown. The world can wa
it one moment.”

  Pence stopped and spun around sharply, not hiding his annoyance at the delay.

  “Why do you say the Prince is out there?” the old man repeated.

  Pence held up the penny. “Who gave this to you?” he asked luridly.

  It was the old man’s turn to play innocent. “Oh… just a traveler… a young man… first in… about a year… not but three days ago,” the gardener revealed little by little. “Had himself a tight pair of tan pants and a long, swish cape, if somewhat worse off for the wear. You would have liked it. Queer fellow, though… nervous… left in the middle of the night. When I woke up, the penny was on the stump heads-up and bright as a bronze star. The heart was inscribed as it is.”

  “Only the Prince can be behind this–the mark of the heart is too great a coincidence,” Pence said decisively. “That is how I know that he is here.”

  “Will you find my princess for me, Pence?” the old man pleaded before the boy had finished speaking.

  “And what?” Pence asked curtly. “Lead her back to you with a trail of pumpkin crumbs? Stand on the stump like a priest and wed you?”

  “Yes, whatever you can,” the old man rasped with a contented smile, closing his eyes. “That last bit would be especially appreciated, thank you.”

  “Wait–that’s your big plan?” Pence shook himself as if to shed a confusing dream. “Find her for you? ‘Do whatever I can?’ Really? Just skip around the Prince–who likes to kill people for no good reason, as I understand it–then find your ancient girlfriend–somewhere even the birds and the wind cannot locate–and do whatever I can? Unbelievable,” Pence muttered under his breath. “You do realize I can barely even lift this penny, don’t you?”

  “Do you begin to see now how desperate I truly am,” asked the gardener, unmoving.

  Pence eyed the old man up and down like a farmer sizing up a scrawny goat. “It’s a terrible plan–terrible–just like your stench, your sense of humor, and social skills that would get you hogtied at a pig-roast.”

  “Will you find her for me?” the old man persisted.

  “Would you have told me the Prince was hereabouts if I hadn’t figured it out on my own, or would you have sent me out to meet him unwittingly?” Pence challenged, eyeing the old man as if he might have a fork and a frying pan hidden behind his back. “Just what exactly did you have on the menu for me?”

  “Pence, in all honesty, with you I don’t believe it’s even going to make a difference.”

  Pence stiffened in surprise, then relaxed his shoulders and puffed out his chest and drew his cape around himself.

  “Will you find her?”

  The boy resumed his march down the path to the gate, penny held proudly. “I have a pretty good head for getting women to follow me, what with having had a precious jewel for a brain when I was first born,” he called back over his shoulder. “And I always put the welfare of others above my own.” He was nearly around the bend. “I’ll find her.”

  “Wait!” called the gardener.

  “Now what?”

  “How… how did you know which path to take? I never told you.”

  “It runs opposite the well,” Pence replied without looking back. “Every potato knows the well is the beginning of the garden, so this path,” he nodded forward, “must lead to the end, which must therefore be the gate. How’s that for symmetry?”

  “That’s not exactly how it works, my boy–”

  “I’ll be right back, you’ll see. I’m just going to ask him a few questions. Maybe break a toe or two. Then again, torturing my enemies might lead to bad publicity. Hey, it really does help to think things through!”

  “I… I… I… could use a sip of water,” the old man hoarsely beseeched, anxious to stall the boy by any means.

  “What?” Pence wheezed as though he could not believe what he was hearing. He looked back over his shoulder. “You’ve got to be kidd–”

  “I’m dying of thirst, Pence. Just one sip. You could fetch a few drops for me in that nifty cape of yours, I’ll wager. The gate will wait. The gate will wait.”

  “Nifty? Do you really think so? I wasn’t sure you liked it before–I mean, no! Fetch you a drink? That will take forever,” he moaned like a boy told to spend a summer’s day whitewashing a fence. “I’d probably end up falling in the bucket and drowning!” He took a few steps back. “I thought you wanted me to leave the garden. And you’re not dying of thirst, either. You’re dying because you don’t have a heart.” Pence continued to slowly back away as he talked faster and faster. “Or maybe it’s because you’re twice cursed, your each side at odds with the other. I’m not really sure what’s going on there. It’s awfully disgusting to look at, though. Rub some dirt on it and walk it off before I get back with the old bag. So long!” He sidestepped once and was gone behind the bend.

  “Pence!” called the old man. “Stay to the path, whatever you do! If you get in any tight spots, just calm down and use your head! Don’t go in water! Don’t get on fire! Don’t feed wild animals! If you meet the Prince, reveal nothing of what has become of my arms! And if you find my princess, just tell her your name!”