Pence Page 24

  Chapter XV

  The Purloiner’s suggestion hung in the air like a snowflake buoyed on a winter draft, floating back and forth, dipping down and curling up until the words finally came to rest on the nape of Pence’s neck. The boy shivered, shook his head, and wrapped the ragged velvetleaf around his tiny shoulders like a pauper in a threadbare jacket.

  The Purloiner scratched inside his nostril. “As I said, I do not know if the Princess still lives–”

  “She does,” Pence said faithfully, “my old man told me so. And I feel her in my heart, though fainter than before, as if she was wilting…”

  “Then it is time for a rescue, is it not? I will suspend my hunt for the oh-so-clever Prince,” declared the Purloiner. “I do not think he will take this road while we are away.” He dipped into another deferential bow toward the woods like a servant unrolling red carpet before his lord. “Do come along, young master. For the old gardener’s benefit, mind you. When we return, he shall have his hearing with royalty. Such tales you’ll have to tell of your travels, then.”

  “The road is too far,” said Pence, taciturn. “I’d have to run to make good time, and I surmise you to be in too poor of health to keep up with me.”

  The Purloiner arched an eyebrow.

  “I’m faster than I look,” Pence assured him, stealing a sideways step away from the giant. “Honestly, we should go back to the garden. You’ll like it there. There are flowers to look at and lots of pretty crud like that. And lots of girls, too.”

  The Purloiner raised his other eyebrow.

  “Although I haven’t technically met any for myself–”

  “Your offer sorely tempts me,” the Purloiner cut in with maudlin remorse, “but a man does not wait through the grinding of a century for something only to leave it to luck on the last hand.”

  “You should tell my old man that,” said Pence, preoccupied scratching grit from one ear. “Hold on–what have you been waiting a hundred years for?” he asked the purple-clad giant with sudden energy, although his show of interest may have owed to the fresh ball of earwax he had just excavated.

  “Why, the Prince, of course! Haven’t I already said?” The Purloiner chuckled like a man caught cheating at cards. “Now, young master, it would be best to reach the tunnel road before the things in the night begin to bay. Let the distance be the least of your worries: I have a… method of travel that will have us there more swiftly than a flying horse whipped to its wingtips. We will find the Princess’s door by daybreak and be back to your garden before this same hour tomorrow.”

  “If you really know where she is,” Pence hedged skeptically, “we should warn my old man before we bring her back. He’ll need time to put on some drawers.” He glanced back over his shoulder, clearly anxious to return to the gate. “If you don’t want to come, wait here. I’ll be back. We’ll get her, then.” He took another sideways stride back, like a step in a waltz of cat and mouse; in perfect rhythm, with great flair, the Purloiner took two sliding paces forward, negating Pence’s withdrawal a hundred times over.

  “Yeah, like I said, I told my old man I would be back soon. You know how it goes,” Pence said nervously. “If I’m late, I’ll be making a liar out of myself, and he’ll probably fret over me until his beard falls out.” Three more hurried steps back. “Give a holler if you see the Prince. Fare well! Good to meet you. Yes. Bye!” Pence turned his back to the Purloiner and trotted away, but the giant was too fast for him.

  The Purloiner closed the short gap between he and the boy with one final stomp as though the waltz had ended and the dancing was done. He raised his right arm, cloak up-clutched in his hand, and curled it high above and behind Pence, curtaining off the road to the garden like a vulture spreading a wing to cut off the escape of his prey. “There is no time for that,” he said to the boy, foreclosing all debate.

  “Move your cape, sir,” said Pence, fighting to keep his voice from quivering, “I want to go home.”

  “You seek adventure? What lad has ever said no? This will be your biggest adventure of all.” The Purloiner knelt and draped his lustrous cloak nose-close to Pence, attempting to usher the boy backward, toward the woods. “I’ll even let you ride on my hat. What do you say? Can any other sprout or spud from the garden boast such a story?”

  “I don’t know… it is tempting… but I did tell that old man I’d be back soon… Oh, life is so difficult when you don’t know what to do! Am I to believe you really have a magical flying horse machine–”

  “That’s not quite how I phrased it–” disclaimed the Purloiner with a pinched expression.

  “–and that you simply left it all alone by the side of the road where it might wander off? Sounds pretty fishy.”

  “Of course not,” scoffed the Purloiner. “That would be preposterous. It’s tied to a tree.”

  “Oh. Okay then.” Pence may have been satisfied with this answer in particular, but apparently not with the plan itself, for he refused to budge. He stood staring into the yawning swathe of purple fabric that was draped before him like a man gazes into the mouth of a vast cavern. “Please move your cape. I’ll not ask again.”

  The Purloiner deflated. He let his cape droop, though nowhere near enough to allow Pence a free route forward. “I see you’ll not change your mind. A pity, a pity. At the top of the next hill, where my… device… is tethered, we might have caught a truly inspiring view of this sunset before we embarked.”

  “Sunset?” gagged Pence. “Come again? You mean the Sun is going to land? On the ground? And we could see where?” He snickered fiendishly as malign machinations whirred to full speed behind the lights of his eyes. “The fool! He would come here, sneaking onto my territory, and he thinks I won’t figure his tricks out?”

  “That’s not… It’s a little different…” the Purloiner trailed off, uncertain how to correct Pence’s misguided notions as succinctly as possible. Eventually he just said, “Sure, that’s the gist of it.”

  “This will give me a huge tactical advantage,” Pence whispered to himself behind his hand as if the gardener’s left foot was ever-presently there to listen to his every idea. “I may not need my sword if I can ambush him in his sleep.”

  “Does this mean you’re coming with me?” asked the Purloiner.

  Pence ignored him. Pacing left and right, he lectured to himself, “If I let the Sun get away when I have the opportunity to follow now and finish him once and for all, I will return to the garden a failure.” Pence turned on his heel, facing the woods, straightened his back and thrust his chin high, his grain of rice nearly vertical. “Lead the way, good sir the Purloiner.”

  The Purloiner’s sable cowl slipped for an instant, revealing a wide smile of pointy black teeth and purple gums, but he pulled the sable up to his mouth again before Pence saw. “As you wish, young master.”

  “Well, get on with it, then,” said Pence. “You say I’m your master, but all you give me is attitude.”

  “Forgive me,” the Purloiner crooned as he curved into a formal bow, rigid at the waist. He pulled his hat off in one swift motion–his head remained level, the bottle of grog balanced effortlessly on his bald, bumpy cranium–and he scooped Pence up with the brim of his hat like it was a spatula. Standing tall, the purple-clad giant placed the stovepipe cap back over the bottle–all in the same smooth motion–and Pence found himself suddenly looking at the world from a highly privileged yet precarious new point of view.

  He braced himself on the circular brim of the silk top hat like a sea captain on the foredeck of his ship, gazing over the fields of brittle grass waving in the wind as though they were endless ocean. He whistled his admiration.

  The Purloiner glided away from the garden without another word.

  “This was a terrific idea,” said Pence happily. “My old man told me to think before every step I took; it would have taken me a thousand years just to get beyond sight of the garden! Step, think, step, think, step, think… But this! Yeah… You do all the legwor
k, I get to rest my feet and run my mouth. This partnership might work out, after all.”

  The Purloiner did not respond to this, nor when Pence asked how long it would take to reach the hill with the flying horse, or what the flying horse looked like, how the Purloiner acquired the flying horse, how the flying horse flew, and if the flying horse ate carrots, because Pence knew a few that were getting too big for their britches.

  Pence was unable to see the Purloiner’s face from his stance atop the hat, of course, and he decided against leaning over the brim to press his questions. Instead, like any young child, out of sight soon became out of mind and the boy fell silent, traveling with his own thoughts as though he was the only person in all the world. Then he spotted something in the grass.

  “My sword!” he shouted. “My sword! It’s there!” He ran around the Purloiner’s hat elatedly, circling the cylindrical center over and over. “There it is! Stop! Ha! What fortune! Fate smiles upon me as ever with her magnanimous buxom!”

  The white splinter lay among an infinity of blades of grass, each cut in fragmented rays of light, but Pence’s eye was equal to the task–to him the single sliver of white wood shone out like frozen lightning. Luckily, it lay only a step or two beside the path. “Oh, happy day!” Pence caroled. “Oh… Hey, wait. Wait! Stop, it’s right there!”

  The Purloiner grunted and kept walking.

  “Stop! Stop, for the love of big giant ladies with beards! Stop, please!” Pence cried desperately, but there was nothing he could do to control his course now.

  The Purloiner ignored his pleas with princely silence.

  “I need a sword if I’m to slay the Prince!” Pence begged him. “I need a sword if I’m to rescue the Princess! Oh, why won’t you stop?”

  The Purloiner’s pace was single-minded. Pence saw the tiny white splinter for the last time by the grace of a shimmer of sunlight stretched low over the fields.

  “What good can I accomplish without a weapon? My foes will all laugh at me. The Prince will laugh at me. The Sun will laugh at me.” Pence fell silent as the Purloiner devoured the barren path with long, brisk strides. “And yet,” Pence said softly, “and yet… when I think… it was the Sun’s light to show me where my sword lay. Surely the dastard knows I would only wield it against him?” He gazed up to the mountains and the sky. “Why would he aid me, then? We are mortal foes, now and forever–he knows this. Sometimes, I just do not understand.”

  The Purloiner cracked his nose and said nothing.

  Pence balanced on the brim of the stovepipe hat and contemplated the fading of the light.