Oh well, magic—magic pumps, magic privies, in the wonderful magic travelling inn—I should have known. At last my eyes uncrossed and I glanced over at Fiz, who glared back at me and pulled a blanket tighter about her feet.
Suddenly with a thump, the sparkly glow from the windows subsided, and once again daylight, wan and thin, streamed in through the muddled glass.
“Where are we?” asked one of the dammen, the elder one, Dando’s mate, I think. A regular Amazon, towering some three feet high.
“I don’t know, Molly,” answered Dando. “I didn’t have time to select a destination.”
Molly burst into tears. “This is just like the time you lost Tip and Perry. And who knows where they might be?”
Dando hung his head. “Wull, I didn’t have much choice. That black rider—”
“Black rider this time,” wailed Molly, “Black Dragon last time. And the time before it was—”
“Now, now,” interrupted Dando, his eyes darting this way and that, glancing about at all of us, “there’s no call to upset our guests.”
“A pox on our guests,” spat Molly, and Marley reeled back in horror, examining his hands, feeling his face, as she continued. “Dando Thistledown, all I know is that the last time we fled, the Dragon, it was, and landed somewhere, and put out the fire on the roof, and repainted the scorched porch, Tip and Perry stepped out that door off on some lark of their own and were never seen again.” Once more she burst into tears.
“There, there, Molly, someday we’ll find them. Someday when I can remember how I twisted the—” He glanced down at the ring he wore.
Beside me, Tynvyr slapped Rufous on the nose. “No!” she hissed sharply, and the fox stopped looking at me with his pointy-toothed grin and, disgruntled, lay down.
“Tynvyr,” I whispered, “who are Tip and Perry, and are they really small enough to ride larks?”
Tynvyr smiled and shook her head, No, and whispered back, “Tip is their son, and Perry is his cousin.”
Tall Molly pulled herself up to her thirty-six inches, stifling her tears at last. “Well, Dando, you don’t know exactly where we are, you say, but you can send someone out to look about.”
“Now, Molly, I shouldn’t leave the inn.” Dando glanced significantly at his ring, and Molly nodded. “And none of you dammen should go. I mean, look at what just happened, the black rider and all. And that only leaves …” Dando looked around and down at Fiz, Marley, Tynvyr and Rufous, Rafferty, and me.
Rafferty sighed. “Alright, Dando, m’lad, I’ll go. But remember what happened back in auld Eire, what with th’ rattly snakes and all. If I come arunnin’ back in, somewan needs to shut th’ door after me quick as a cat, else there moight be th’ divil t’ pay.”
As best as I can tell, Rafferty was gone for two days, and when he got back he was drunk.
And dressed in a paper sack.
And covered with filth.
Marley took one look at the filthy wretch and ran shrieking up the stairs and leapt into a bathtub and began frantically scrubbing himself.
I’m not certain that he even took his clothes off.
The rest of us rushed to Rafferty’s side, where he had fallen inward through the door and to the floor.
He was singing some ditty under his wine-laden breath, and only now and again could I catch a word or two—something about mushroom rings and the ones who dance there.
We couldn’t make any sense of what he was saying, and so Dando got Molly to brew this almost-black drink made from little dark brown beans, ground up, and they poured gallons of it down the inside of Rafferty’s neck, and soon we had this very alert drunk on our hands, singing at the top of his lungs:
“Whin th’ Fairies dance,
Oh they sometimes ware no pants
…”
Fiz shrieked, “You peeked!” She turned to Tynvyr. “He peeked!”
Outraged, Tynvyr turned up her nose and spun away from the drunken Leprechaun, snatching away the cold cloth she had been holding to his head. “Come, Fiz, Peeping Raffertys don’t deserve our help.” And they marched off in high dudgeon.
Gee, when he sobered up, I would have to find out from Peeping Rafferty precisely where this mushroom ring was.
Marley came back downstairs just in time to see Rafferty throw up all over, and the Gnome ran shrieking back up to the bathing room and we could hear him moaning and sobbing amid more sounds of frantical scrubbing.
Rafferty, on the other hand, groaned and passed out.
“Garn!” exclaimed Dando. “Well, let’s clean him up and lay him on the couch and wait for him to come to.”
And so we did, covering Rafferty with a blanket.
It was late in the day when Rafferty came ’round, and then it was that we found out where he’d been and what he had been up to.
I wish I’d been elsewhere.
But, there we were, near Rafferty: me, Fiz, Tynvyr and Rufous, and Marley, the Gnome now as clean as a pin, though his skin was nigh rubbed raw—you’ve heard of dishpan hands, well Marley had an entire dishpan body. Dando and Molly were there, too.
Anyway, as Rufous—just tasting—took a tiny lick of me and Tynvyr slapped him away, Rafferty sat up with a start, and grabbed his head, groaning, and looked wildly about. Seeing Dando—“I’ve found them!” exclaimed the Leprechaun, wincing at the loudness of whoever it was that was talking, discovering that it was himself. “I’ve found them,” he repeated, softly this time. “Tip and Perry. I know whare they be.”
Dando leapt forward and grabbed the Leprechaun by the shoulders, jerking him back and forth and back and forth. “Where, Rafferty? Where?”
Rafferty just screamed and clutched his thrashing head.
Molly shoved Dando aside. “Where?” she shrieked in the Leprechaun’s ear, grabbing him by the shoulders, taking up where Dando had left off. But suddenly, as if the news were too much for her, she swooned, falling on top of Dando.
Finding himself free, in spite of his throbbing head, Rafferty leapt over the back of the couch, aiming to keep it between him and Dando and Molly.
“Faith, now, boyo,” he called out to Dando, the Warrow rising to his feet, “ye’ve got t’ stop bashin’ me brain about in me head. I’ll tell ye. I’ll tell ye. Jist leave me alone.”
Dando helped Molly to the couch, where she lay down, and he took up a cold cloth, one that they’d been using on Rafferty, and applied it to her forehead. Then he turned to the Leprechaun. “Tell me.”
Rafferty came around the end of the couch and that was when he discovered—“I’m naked as a woodpecker!” he shrieked, snatching at the blanket, covering himself, turning red, refusing to look at Tynvyr and Fiz, who were struggling to stifle laughter, hands over their mouths. Then Rafferty put a finger to his own lips, mumbling, “Oh, now I remember.”
His modesty reclaimed by the blanket, Rafferty took a seat. “Wellanow, Dando, m’lad, in y’r rush t’ get away from that black roider, it seems that y’ve managed to twist that ring o’ y’rs and bring us back to th’ very same place whare y’ went whin y’ escaped the Dragon, back t’ th’ very same location whare y’ lost Tip and Perry in th’ first place.”
The ring! So that’s how Dando controls the flight of the inn. By twisting his ring! The same ring that at this very moment he was trying to hide by shoving his hands in his pockets. So that’s what he had in his pockets—the controlling ring.