Free The Elfin Ship by James P. Blaylock

in return. Then you could bring back what you took if it wasn’t all ate up and get back what you left. He left something mighty fine for them cheeses though. It was what they call an octopus and it was pickled in a glass jar. It come all the way upriver from the sea with the traders. Grandpa had a batch of such things; he gave one to my old ma, who still has it though she don’t let on in case someone might come to steal it.’
    Jonathan glanced sharply at Dooly and began to speak but thought better of it. Dooly had, no doubt, seen the encased octopus which had sat for years on the Cheeser’s mantel and so had generated the story out of his fancy. But then it was true that Jonathan had never known where his father
had
actually gotten the thing. Dooly seemed to be intent upon having his grandfather embroiled in everything, like a colored thread that begins at one edge of a tapestry and seems to wind along through every scene on the cloth, popping up here and there and disappearing again into the weave only to become visible somewhere else.
    ‘Wish I had that pocketwatch today when them monsters was after me,’ said Dooly. ‘But the conjurer dwarf from the Dark Forest got it. Grandpa was lucky there.’
    ‘How is that?’ asked Jonathan as they drew up to the tree where Professor Wurzle sat looking uncomfortable and pink-faced.
    ‘The thing was a curse. You had to always be winding it. If you let it run down, there was only one man who could start it. If you couldn’t find him, you’d have to walk around with nobody for company and everyone standing like statues. You and me and anyone else would stand still as a tree until the man started it up again.’
    ‘And what man might that be?’ asked Jonathan. For some reason he knew the answer to his own question as soon as he asked it.
    ‘It was the man on the elf airship,’ said Dooly. ‘The same one as was on the pocketwatch, like I told you.’
    Dooly, Jonathan, and Ahab looked up at the Professor lodged in the tree. ‘Up in the tree, are you, Professor?’ Jonathan asked.
    ‘Yes, I am. The opposite pressures exerted by these angling limbs seem to be holding my leg in sway.’
    ‘Does he mean he’s stuck?’ asked Dooly.
    ‘I believe he does,’ replied Jonathan. ‘Why don’t you climb up there and untangle the Professor and the elf gun, and we’ll be on our way before the trolls come back.’
    Dooly did, and the company set out briskly for the raft. Dooly found a chain of several links on the shore and kept it, for it had, very apparently, belonged to one of the trolls who had lost it when fleeing. And although it was greasy and smelled abominably, Dooly intended to nail it to the mast as a trophy. They set out as evening fell and didn’t anchor for the night until they had put several long miles between themselves and the forest of the trolls.

5
Ahab Adrift
    The company spent most of the next two days rafting downriver to Hightower Village. They breakfasted the second morning on bread which had already begun to look a trifle greenish about the top and opened a jar of strawberry preserves with a layer of paraffin over it. Professor Wurzle graciously pointed out that the wax kept certain ‘things’ from getting in. Organoids he called them. Dooly understood him to mean bugs and determined that the lid of the jar, if it wasn’t twisted on by a fool, would keep out any bug he’d ever seen. The wax therefore, said Dooly, was placed in the jar to be chewed on. And a dabble of jam on it, as there was bound to be, made it tolerably good.
    About five miles upriver from the village the alder and hemlock forests began to thin, and wide meadows full of columbine and skunk cabbage and lupin rolled away toward the White Mountains in the east. Rivulets tumbled along across the meadows and rolled on beds of smooth stones down into the Oriel where tall stilt-legged waterfowl plunged through the shallows. The meadows, fresh and green at first, became boggier and