“This” said Cornelius Cornwit Gnawson, gazing about the deserted village of Woolly Willows, “is an eerie silence.”
Having written about many eerie silences in his previous fantasy novels, Gnawson knew what he was talking about. The three of them peered around at the abandoned village, where washing still hung out on the line to dry and abandoned horses clip-clopped about in hungry despair.
At the village inn, named ‘The Pebble & Peahen,’ there were mouldering remains of meals on the tables and fusty tankards of flat ale at the bar. The multitudinous flies that invaded the inn no longer bothered to buzz around -- they were so surfeited with spoiled items that they simply lay on their backs and snored. They made a peculiar racket that raised Tim’s hackles. Gullet the Ghoul promptly swept up a pile of the moribund things and ate them without any ceremony.
“First an eerie silence, and now this peculiar noise that raises the hackles of all honest men” intoned Gnawson, sensing another fantasy novel coming on. Gullet made a sour face -- not at Sir Gnawsons tendentious sentence, but at the raw taste of the flies he’d just eaten. They needed more time to ripen.
“I don’t know where everybody went” said Tim to his companions, “but I don’t think it was for a happy reason. I’d like to leave here as quick as we can, after getting some dandruff from that dandruff mine for the lumdiddles back home.”
After sniffing around, Sir Gnawson found several barrels of perfectly good ale, a large wheel of perfectly good freckled cheese, and a tall stack of perfectly sound flat bread. A strange gleam came into his eye -- the gleam of a man afflicted with the belief that he will be writing a fantasy novel that will make him rich.
“The mine is just down the street, where that tall derrick stands” he told Tim impatiently. “You and Gullet can go collect your dandruff as soon as you like.” Gnawson grabbed a white linen tablecloth and began ripping it into handkerchiefs. “I need to stay here to begin my next great story -- I’m calling it “The Eerily Silent Village.”
Gnawson’s writing mania was contagious. Now Gullet had a strange gleam in his sullen eye.
“I, too, am staying on here” he proclaimed, sticking a hand into his suit coat in what he believed to be a writerly gesture. “I have longed to tell my story to the world for a long time.” He pounded on a table. “Here I will sit me down to compose my story -- to be called “Forty Years a Ghoul!”
The two mad authors looked at each other with complete understanding. Tim could only shake his head sadly and leave them to their folly. Back in his home village of Mountebank, Tim had known several normally sane men and women who had suddenly developed the notion that they should be writing books instead of cooking meals or making an honest living -- these poor unfortunates had abandoned their families and careers, gone off into the woods, and eventually starved to death with a quill clutched in their hand. There was nothing anyone could do to dissuade them from scribbling until their fingernails turned black and fell out. Svarm the Sorceress told Tim it was a bug in the brain that caused such miserable insanity -- that, and the reading of too many books late at night, when the brain needed to shut down and not be overstimulated with a midden heap of galloping words and trashy plots.
Tim resolutely headed for the dandruff mine. Gnawson and Gullet sharpened their quills and began writing on the linen handkerchiefs.
On the way to the rusty derrick Tim stopped to remove a pebble from his boot. That’s when he noticed that his shoon were sadly dilapidated, with holes in the soles and strips of frowzy leather hanging down from the sides like curls on a giddy schoolgirl. He spotted a cobbler’s shop nearby, with a tantalizing array of new boots in the window.
His new heroic soul scorned to think of misappropriating a pair of brand new boots -- that is what cowards and footlings did! He would battle on with his own boots until they disintegrated into brown snuff! But his old practical self was still in the ascendant at times, and it asked him since no one was around, and not likely to be around ever again, what was the harm in helping himself to a pair of sturdy new boots, the better to meet the new adventures that undoubtedly awaited him? Tim went into the cobbler’s shop, just to look around. Minutes later he came out shod in a pair of plum colored boots that came up to his calfs and gave him a feeling of heroic stature. He salved his heroic conscience by leaving behind a polite note detailing who he was and where he could be reached and promising to pay the bearer of said note for the boots he had borrowed at any time in the future.
Then he strode up to the dandruff mine.
There was a decided smell of dandruff in the air. A sort of dry and bitter scent, with a hint of chalk to it. Tim saw a bag half full of dandruff in a weedy patch nearby, so he stepped over to it -- and plummeted straight through some rotten wooden planks into the bowels of the dark dandruff mine!
Stunned but unhurt, he shambled to his feet to peer about. A torch burned fitfully in the distance. He walked toward it. A familiar voice rang out:
“Halt, dirt demon or dandruff sprite, or whatever you may be! Or I shall ensorcel you like a fine tooth whippersnapper!”
“Auntie Svarm -- is that you?” asked Tim in surprise.
After a momentary silence, the beauteous form of Svarm slid out of the shadows and up to a very startled Tim. She, too, it appeared, was knocked for a loop.
“Tim, can that really be you? I had thought you were perished!” she cried, crushing him in a hug.
“What in the wampus are you doing down here in a dandruff mine?” Tim had to ask. He noticed that Svarm’s clothes were a bit dusty and her hair, normally so perfectly placed, was tangled in unseemly knots.
“Ah, dear Tim -- when you didn’t come back I had to go looking for you” said Svarm sadly. “A tribe of celerymen came upon me while I was riding through the Treeless Forest of Umber. They kidnapped me to work in this wretched mine, from nine to five each day.”
When Svarm saw the look of distressed alarm on Tim’s face, she quickly changed her tone to one much lighter, even merry -- she remembered how hard it was for Tim to face anything untoward or frightening.
“Oh, but don’t you worry about it, Tim. I shall bamboozle those celerymen the next time they come down with my dinner and we shall both escape and go back home to Mountebank” she said soothingly to him.
And that’s when she noticed something new and strange and wonderful about Tim Laughingstock. He no longer seemed quite so soft or placid. His face took on a hardened, vengeful look.
“Don’t YOU worry, Auntie Svarm. I’ll deal with those celerymen myself -- they’re going to regret fiddling with one of my family” he told her grimly. “Where are they now, and how many of them are there?” He picked up a shovel, hefting it like a pikestaff.
Now the truth of the matter was that Svarm had ridden out looking for Tim and when she came across the celerymen they all immediately fell in love with her and convinced her to travel with them to their palace for an owl pie dinner. In fact, they were so infatuated with her that they declared their determination to help her find her lost nephew -- no matter the danger involved!
Celerymen, it should be noted, are only three feet high, bright green, and very brittle.
Svarm considered their gallantry rather silly and tedious, so while the celerymen were gorging themselves on owl pie she had slipped away on her horse, galloping madly away from their palace. When she had fled far into the night, she stopped to water her horse, had walked towards what looked like a derrick in the starlight, and had fallen through some rotten wooden planks into the dandruff mine -- just like Tim. She had been stuck in the dandruff mine for three days. But Svarm was loathe to admit such a mundane accident. So she exaggerated her involvement with the celerymen. Now she would have to figure out a way to get herself and Tim out of the mine without admitting her taradiddle to him.
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