Well-a-day to you all and welcome to a new week and the proper beginning of my intent to regularly post the continuing tale of Economous Musgrove, illustrator, some-time concometrist and would-be
fabulist, and citizen of Brandenbrass. It must be said that I cannot promise that this will succeed as a story, but I am willing to try if your are willing to go with me come what may.
Either way, let us get on with part 3 ...
Economous
musgrove
© D.M.Cornish
PLEASE DO NOT PUBLISH OR REPRODUCE WITHOUT MY PERMISSION
Chapter 1, part 3
Chapter 1, part 3
Breathing
deeply of the tepid leafy perfume of the wooded park, he heaved a long sigh
seeking to expel his fretting with that great exhalation. Curling and uncurling
his bare toes in the grasses kept cropped and neat by many rabbit mouths, he
allowed himself to bask for a beat or two of his humours in the dapple of
sunlight touching his face as the day orb reached the acme of its meridian. Ringed
about by hawthorn, the bench that was his seat was far enough in that he could
almost pretend the city and its press of cares was not there. He tilted his
head slightly so that the pale leaves of a stand of plane trees screened the
banal sight of a chimney and a ridgecap. For this moment he let himself believe
that he was out in proper woods wide, unfettered by taming walls, free of woes
and weights, living each day as though it was new and unspoiled. A kind of
music that was not quite music started in his soul singing of a longing for a
great before when all things were simpler and bright …
With a snort
and a startled blink, Economous roused himself.
“Was I
sleeping?” he wondered in a whisper.
Bringing his attention pointedly
to the scrawl of rabbits bounding over the open page of his numrelogue,
Economous became sharply aware that the threwd of the park had thickened,
became more intent, more deliberate in its watchfulness. In all the months he
had been coming here such a thing had never happened before. A chill shuddering
down his backbone, Economous turned first to his right, peering futilely into
the wooded gloom seeing nothing but leaves, branches, trunks growing haphazard
as if a true wild wood, stretching back in to the deeps of the park behind him.
“You have a commendable discernment
of subject, womb-born,” came a deep, oddly purring voice over his other
shoulder.
Pivoting in a twinkling he
found himself peering straight into one of the queerer sights he had ever beheld.
Partly thrust from thick hawthorn growth was the face of a greatly oversized
rabbit – well, more the combination of rabbit and something more feline, its
great ears errect and swivelling as it looked on the would-be fabulist with
what to all the Alle looked like mirth. Suddenly this creature bent close and breathed
upon him. Instantly his senses were overwhelmed with the thick perfume of
honeysuckle and the odour of new-turned earth that brought happy thoughts of
the vegetable plot at Athingdon Athy.
With a jolt, Economous
remembered that he ought to be afraid. Shouting in wordless fright, he seized
his calibrator and his thricehigh and sprang away, hareing barefooted down the
lawn and the scant path, heedless of thorns and prickles in the lawn, leaving
all the rest of his belongings to that … that thing as he dashed from that haunted parkland. Through its gate and
safe out on the South Arm – the street of cloes-built half houses and merchant
vendors that ran along the Mouldwood’s eastern boudary – Economous halted. His
days were tough enough; he would not be deprived of his shoes and trews, nor of
his numrelogue, satchel or the well-proofed frockcoat that had already
preserved him from a deadly blow dealt many years ago.
Squaring his thricehigh
determinedly upon his crown, the would-be fabulist steeled his milt and raced
back into the Mouldwood, back up the path of his hasty flight to the hawthorn
bench. He slowed for fear of the rabbit-beast. The woodland park creaked and
ticked. His humours thumped in his ears. All the rabbits were gone and the weak
threwdishness he new as common to this land was restored. Somewhere deeper in
the park a wagtail gave voice to a tetchy call. With a lunge, Economous
snatched his abandoned belongings from the hazelwood bench and dashed back to
the Moldwood gates as fast as limbs and load would let him. The moment he was
clear of the tree and grass and gate and out again on the long house-crowded
street he halted. Bent, hand on knee, wind heaving to and from his lungs in
great gulps, he leant against a stone pillaster of the park’s wall and quite
unaccountably began to laugh. The clatter of lentums, park drags and pavillions
running past largely swallowed the scandalous noise, but a day-strolling
panderer in the lead of three fine-dressed young children was forced to step
about him as he was rocked in his peculiar glee.
“How unseemly, sir!” the panderer
exclaiming, her cheeks puffing self-importantly. “Not in all my born; it is
scarce midday and you are as soused as a hog’s face!”
This made Econmous laugh
only the harder.
Unseemly!
If only she knew what he had
just seen.
That was a monster I just
found wasn’t it…? he wondered in astonishment his laughter subsiding as
quickly as it had risen. Suely surely not…
He had seen a hand of nickers
and bogles on the few monster hunts he had managed to join; terrifying things
all teeth and claws and slavering malice Yet a monster right in the very heart
of our ancient, impreganble city? This should be mpossible…
I ought tell someone of this!
The masters of the city
would most certainly desire to know so terrible a revelation yet what would he
say? To whom would he actually say it?
“Are ye a’right, mate?” asked
a passing water caddie, permanently bent – as was a mark of his trade – under
the small but substantial weight of a water puncheon.
“There’s a… there’s a…” the
would-be fabulist tried between great gasps. “There’s a mon–”
Abruptly, with a swallow, Economous
stopped.
Who would credit such an
outrageous claim? The impossibility of a monster in the very middle of so great
and safe a capital as Brandenbrass. He doubted even Asthetica would believe him… And now
that he came to it he found that did not want
to speak to anyone of this after all. The rabbit-and-cat beast had neither
slavered nor snarled, nor had it rent him limb from trunk as all monsters were
supposed to do. The worst it had done was compliment his drawing and to blow on
him – odd certainly, but not violent.
Suddenly, inwardly,
Economous was five years old again, just returned terrified but elated from the
hearthwood copse that had grown behind the row of high-houses on the edge of
his home village of Lo far out west on the fringes of the parishlands of the
Page. Such coppices are a dangerous necessity in any rural setting, providing
firewood easy to hand but always a potential haunt for some wandering bogle or
nicker. Sure enough, little Economous had been seeking delicious bird’s eggs
out in the forbidden trees with three childhood chums when a nasty slavering
nicker all spines and talons had reared out from some dense blackberry thicket,
snatching the little Economous in its cruel grip and sending the other boys to
wild hollering flight. Still able to conjure the whirling, thought-emptying
panic that had gripped him, one notion had stood clear in his little mind: this
was his end. Yet in a great and tumbling violence, little Economous found
himself free. Kicking and flailing to his feet, all he glimpsed before flying
into the trees and home was a brown-skinned horned and bearded creature
grappling with his wicked abductor, pounding away at the slavering black nicker
with terrible mighty blows. Home once more and barely believing what had
happened he immediately confessed to his parents of his profound fortune.
“I was attacked by a bad
monster but a good one saved me!” he had cried in child’s delight and wonder,
thrilled by such an astounding discovery, his humours racing at so miraculous an escape.
Yet rather than the delight
that such a revelation of such a wondrous rescue of their only son, his parents
had scolded him bitterly for telling such a horrid falsehood.
“There is no such thing as a
good monster!” his father had
bellowed.
“Never ever speak of this to anyone!” his mother had hissed in wide-eyed
worry.
Not one gleam of relief that
their own son was safe, just this great dread of other people’s regard, of
ill-rumour – all too ready, and of the
black consequence for being found a monster-loving sedorner.
In the days after he had
appealed to the witness of his friends yet none of them ever said a word in
support of the truth or even of a supposed comrade.
Something had shifted inside
little Economous so long ago, and it had never righted itself since…
“Jumpin’ at shadows are we,
mate?”
The water caddie’s garbled
voice broke into the dark charm of memory.
Tricorn tipped back on his
crown to scratch at his brow, the fellow was squinting at Economous closely.
Equanimity returning, it
took a beat for Economous to understand what the fellow had said through shockingly
broken and protuberant teeth. “Well,” Economous began. “I –”
“She’s a curious plot of
glebeland, that’s a’certain,” the fellow pressed, nodding towards the park and
shrugging his shoulders against the heavy leather strap of the puncheon where
it had worn the cloth of his olive-drab frockcoat to a greasy gloss. “Not
willin’ to let go her threwd for no labour. I have watched ye as I amble on me
common rounds, go in day on and day off like no common folk do. I caution ye: loiter
a’long in that yonder park and ye are might to reckon on sights of things not prop’ly
there…”
Economous frowned. “Well…” He
was too keen an observer, too used to rigourously discerning what it is his
eyes beheld to be duped by so simple an effect as the swiming shadows of breeze
tossed branches. Perplexed now, Economous straightend and drew in the city’s
pungeant air. Somehow, the creature’s breath lingered yet in his nostrils,
sweet and sour and loamy at once. No, he had seen what he had seen and there
was no getting around it. “Jumping at shadows.” Economous muttered, more to
himself than as an answer.
However this seemed enough
for the smiling water-carrier and he immediately took hold of this small
opportunity. “A goose for a gulp, m’lord,” he asked.
Economous paid two cobs – or
four guise – and took four full swills from the communal pewter ladle that hung
by a long leather cord from harness that held the puncheon high on the caddie’s
hunched shoulders.
With a wink the caddie went
on his way.
Returning trews and shoes
and coat to their rightful stations on his frame, and taking his lank black
hair up in a bow and setting his thricehigh firmly back upon his head, Economous transformed
himself from an unshod, bare-headed, tree-embracing wilder to the civilised
city-dwelling soul he usually played. Thus comported, he made his way south
down South Arm and for home, perplexed by a muted yet definite glow of peculiar
and unfounded … positivity – if that
was a word – that had crept into his bosom.
