“Look, Master Frito,” said Spam, pointing up the road. “Elfs, lots of ’em. Ooooo, I must be dreaming. I wish the old Fatlip could see me now.”
“I wish I were dead,” whined Pepsi.
“So do I,” said Moxie.
“May the good fairy what sits in the sky grant yer ev’ry wish,” said Spam.
“Where is Goodgulf, I wonder,” wondered Frito.
Garfinkel strode back out onto the porch and produced a small tin whistle on which he blew a single, ear-splitting, flat note, whereupon the sheep wandered aimlessly away.
“Magical,” sighed Spam.
“Follow me,” said Garfinkel, and he led Stomper and the boggies along a narrow muddy path which wound through clumps of flowering rhodogravure bushes and towering shoe trees. As he walked along, Frito smelled an evanescent fragrance of new-mown hay mingled with bleach and mustard, and from afar off he heard the delicate, heart-breaking twangs of a mouth-harp and a few shreds of an elvish song:
At the end of the path stood a small bungalow made of polished Joyvah Halvah and surrounded by a bed of glass flowers. Garfinkel turned the door’s all-day sucker and motioned the party inside. They found themselves in a large room which entirely filled the little house. There were a great many beds arranged around the walls, all of which looked as though they had been recently slept in by perverted kangaroos, and in the corners were a few odd chairs and tables which showed quite clearly the hand, and foot, of the elvish craftsmen. In the center of the room was a large table littered with the remnants of a violent game of three-pack canasta and several bowls of artificial fruit which couldn’t have been mistaken for the real thing at fifty meters. These Moxie and Pepsi immediately ate.
“Make yourself at home,” said Garfinkel, as he left. “Checkout time is three o’clock.”
Stomper slumped heavily into a chair, which folded up under him with a muffled crack.
Garfinkel was not gone more than five minutes when there came a knock at the door, and Spam went, rather irritably, to answer it. “It had better be food,” he mumbled, “cause I’m gonna eat it.”
He opened the door with a jerk, revealing a mysterious stranger in a long gray cape and hood, wearing thick, black eyeglasses with a false rubber nose quite unconvincingly dangling from the bridge. The dark figure had a cardboard mustache, a dustmop wig, and a huge, handpainted tie with a picture of an elf-maiden. In his left hand was a mashie-niblick, and on his feet he wore shower clogs. He was puffing a fat cigar.
Spam reeled back in astonishment, and Stomper, Moxie, Pepsi, and Frito cried in unison, “Goodgulf!”
The old man shuffled in, discarding his disguises to reveal the familiar faith healer and bunco artist. “Lo, it is I,” admitted the Wizard, dispiritedly plucking a few strings out of his hair. With that he went around and shook all their hands very hard, shocking them with the little electric buzzer he invariably carried concealed in his palm.
“Well, well,” said Goodgulf, “here we all are again.”
“I’d sooner be in a dragon’s colon,” said Frito.
“I trust you still have it,” said Goodgulf, eyeing Frito.
“Do you mean the Ring?”
“Silence,” commanded Goodgulf in a loud voice. “Speak not of the Great Ring here or anywhere. If Sorhed’s spies discovered that you, Frito Bugger, hailing from the Sty, had the One Ring, all would be lost. And his spies are everywhere. The Nine Black Riders are abroad again, and there are those who claim to have seen the Seven Santinis, the Six Danger Signs, and the entire Trapp family, including the dog. Even the walls have ears,” he said, pointing to two huge iqbes which were protruding from behind the mantelpiece.
“Is there no hope?” gasped Frito. “Is nowhere safe?”
“Who can know?” said Goodgulf, and a shadow seemed to pass over his face. “I would say more,” he said, “but a shadow seems to have passed over my face,” and with that he fell strangely silent.
Frito began to weep, and Stomper leaned forward, and putting his hand reassuringly on Frito’s shoulder, said, “Fear not, dear boggie, I will be with you all the way, no matter what may befall.”
“Same here,” said Spam, and fell asleep.
“Us too,” said Moxie and Pepsi, yawning.
Frito remained inconsoiable.
When the boggies awoke from their nap, Goodgulf and Stomper were gone, and the moon was shining fuzzily through the taffy windows. They had finished eating the curtains and were starting in on the iampshades when Garfinkel returned, clad in finest cheesecloth, and led them down to the lodge building they had seen when they first arrived. It was large and brightly lit, and the night was filled with the brouhaha from within. As they approached, there came a silence, and then the plaintive, blackboard-scraping shriek of a nose-flute pierced the air.
“They’re giving a pig a rough time of it in there,” said Spam, blocking his ears.
“Hush,” said Frito, and a voice rose in song, filling the boggies with a vague sense of nausea.
With a last twittering wail, the music died away, and half a dozen stunned birds plopped heavily to the ground in front of Frito.
“What was that?” asked Frito.
“It is an ancient lament in the tongue of the Auld Elves,” sighed Garfinkel. “It tells of Unicef and his long and bitter search for a clean rest room. ‘Are there no facilities here?’ he cries. ‘Is there no washroom?’ No one seems to know.”
So said Garfinkel and led the boggies into the House of Orlon. They found themselves in a long, high-raftered hall down the center of which ran an endless table. At one end was a huge oak mantelpiece and from high above hung brass chandeliers in which fine earwax candles spluttered brightly. Along the table sat the usual flotsam and jetsam of Lower Middle Earth; elves, fairies, Martians, several frogs, dwarves, gnomes, a few token men, a handful of bugbears, several trolls wearing sunglasses, a couple of goblins the Christian Scientists had worked over, and a dragon who had gotten fed up.
At the head of the table sat Orlon and the Lady Lycra robed in cloth of dazzling whiteness and brightness. Dead they looked, and yet it was not so, for Frito could see their eyes shining like wet mushrooms. Bleached was their hair so that it shone like goldenrod, and their faces were as bright and fair as the surface of the moon. All about them zircons, garnets, and iodestones flashed like stars. On their heads were silken lampshades and on their brows were written many things, both fair and foul, such as “Unleash Chiang Kai-shek” and “I love my wife but oh you kid.” Asleep they were.
To the left of Orlon sat Goodgulf in a red fez, revealed as a 32nd Degree Mason and Honorary Shriner, and to his right sat Stomper, clad in the white Gene Autry suit of a Ranger. Frito was shown to a seat about halfway down the table between an unusually deformed dwarf and an elf who smelled like a birdnest, and Moxie and Pepsi were sent to a small table in a corner with the Easter Bunny and a couple of tooth fairies.
As with most mythical creatures who live in enchanted forests with no visible means of support, the elves ate rather frugally, and Frito was a little disappointed to find heaped on his plate a small mound of ground nuts, bark, and dirt. Nevertheless, like all boggies, he was capable of eating anything he could Indian-wrestle down his throat and rather preferred dishes that didn’t struggle too much, since even a half-cooked mouse can usually beat a boggie two falls out of three. No sooner had he finished eating than the dwarf sitting to his right turned to him and proffered an extremely scaly hand in greeting. It’s at the end of his arm, thought Frito, nervously shaking it, it’s got to be a hand.