A tokoloshe snorted. He was a particularly nasty piece of business, a hairy brown dwarf with burning eyes and yellow teeth. "Could be anywhere." The fossegrim sitting with him snickered sycophantically. It was clear who was the brains of this outfit.
"And two bronze legs from the lighthouse of Rhodes lie half-buried in the reeds."
The tokoloshe hesitated, and then moved over to make space for me in his booth. The fossegrim, tall and lean with hair as white as a chimneysweeper's, leaned over the table to listen as he growled sotto voce, "What's the pitch?"
"There's a bag that goes with this key," I said quietly. "It's buried out there somewhere. I'll pay to find it again."
"Haughm," the tokoloshe said. "Well, me and my friend know the place you're looking for. And there's an oni I know can do the digging. That's three, Will you pay us a hundred each?"
"Yes. When the bag is found. Not before.''
"How about a thousand?"
Carefully, I said. "Not if you're just going to keep jacking up the price until you find the ceiling."
"Here's my final offer. Ten percent of whatever's in the bag. Each." Then, when I hesitated. "We'll pick up your bar tab, too."
It was as the vixen had said. I was dressed as only the rich dressed, yet I was disheveled and dirty. That and my extreme anxiety to regain my bag told my newfound partners everything they needed to know.
"Twenty percent," I said. 'Total. Split it however you choose. But first you'll buy me a meal — steak and eggs, if they have it."
The sun had set and the sky was yellow and purple as a bruise, turning to black around the edges. Into the darkness our pickup truck jolted by secret and winding ways. The grim drove and the dwarf took occasional swigs from a flask of Jeyes Fluid, without offering me any. Nobody spoke. The oni, who could hardly have fit in the cab with us, sat in the bed with his feet dangling over the back. His name was Yoshi.
Miles into the interior of the landfill, we came to a stop above a black stream beside which lay two vast and badly corroded bronze legs. "Can you find a forked stick?" I asked.
The tokoloshe pulled a clothes hanger out of the mingled trash and clay. "Use this."
I twisted the wire into a wishbone, tied the key string to the short end, and took the long ends in my hands. The key hung a good half-inch off true. Then, stumbling over ground that crunched underfoot from buried rusty cans, I walked one way and another until the string hung straight down. "Here."
The tokoloshe brought out a bag of flour. "How deep do you think it's buried?"
"Pretty deep," I said. "Ten feet, I'm guessing."
He measured off a square on the ground — or rather, surface, for the dumpings here were only hours old. At his command, Yoshi passed out shovels, and we all set to work.
When the hole reached six feet, it was too cramped for Yoshi to share. He was a big creature and all muscle. Two small horns sprouted from his forehead and a pair of short fangs jutted up from his jaw. He labored mightily, and the pile of excavated trash alongside the hole grew taller and taller. At nine feet, he was sweating like a pig. He threw a washing machine over the lip, and then stopped and grumbled, "Why am I doing all the work here?"
"Because you're stupid," the fossegrim jeered.
The tokoloshe hit him. "Keep digging," he told the oni. "I'm paying you fifty bucks for this gig."
"It's not enough."
"Okay, okay." The tokoloshe pulled a couple of bills from his pocket and gave them to me. "Take the pickup to the Brig-O and bring back a quart of beer for Yoshi."
I did then as stupid a thing as ever I've done in my life.
So far I'd been following the script the vixen had laid out for me, and everything had gone exactly as she'd said it would. Now, rather than playing along with the tokoloshe as she'd advised, I got my back up. We were close to finding the bag and, fool that I was, I thought they would share.
"Just how dumb do you think I am?" I asked. "You won't get rid of me that easily."
The tokoloshe shrugged. "Tough shit, Ichabod."
He and the fossegrim knocked me down. They duct-taped my ankles together and my wrists behind my back. Then they dumped me in the back of the pickup. "Scream if you want to," the tokoloshe said. "We don't mind, and there's nobody else to hear you."
I was terrified, of course. But I'd barely had time to realize exactly how desperate my situation had become when Yoshi whooped, "I found it!"
The fossegrim and the tokoloshe scurried to the top of the unsteady trash pile. "Did you find it?" cried one, and the other said, "Hand it up."
"Don't do it, Yoshi!" I shouted. "There's money in that bag, a lot more than fifty dollars, and you can have half of it."
"Give mc the bag," the tokoloshe said grimly. By his side, the fossegrim was dancing excitedly. Bottles and cans rolled away from his feet. "Yeah," he said. "Hand it up." But Yoshi hestitated. "Half?" he said.
"You can have it all!" I screamed. "Just leave me alive and it's yours!"
The tokoloshe stumbled down toward the oni, shovel raised. His buddy followed alter in similar stance.
So began a terrible and comic fight, the lesser creatures leaping and falling on the unsteady slope, all the while swinging their shovels murderously, and the great brute enduring their blows and trying to seize hold of his tormentors. I could not see the battle — no more than a few slashes of the shovels — though I managed to struggle to my knees, for the discards from Yoshi's excavations rose too high. But I could hear it, the cursing and threats, the harsh clang of a shovel against Yoshi's head and the fossegrim's scream as one mighty hand finally closed about him.
Simultaneous with that scream there was a tremendous clanking and sliding sound of what I can only assume was the tokoloshe's final charge. In my mind's eye, I can see him now, racing downslope with the shovel held like a spear, its point aimed at Yoshi's throat. But whether blade ever connected with flesh or not I do not know, for it set the trash to slipping and sliding in a kind of avalanche.
Once started, the trash was unstoppable. Down it flowed, sliding over itself, all in motion. Down it flowed, rattling and clattering, land made liquid, yet for all that still retaining its brutal mass. Down it flowed, a force of nature, irresistible, burying all three so completely there was no chance that any of them survived.
Then there was silence.
Well!" said the vixen. "That was a tidy little melodrama. Though I must say it would have gone easier on you if you'd simply done as I told you to in the first place." She was sitting on the roof of the cab.
I had never in my life been so glad to see anybody as I was then. "This is the second tune you showed up just when things were looking worst," I said, giddy with relief. "How do you manage it?"
"Oh, I ate a grain of Stardust when I was a cub, and ever since then there's been nary a spot I can't get into or out of, if I set my mind to it."
"Good, good, I'm glad. Now set me free!" "Oh, dear. I wish you hadn't said that." "What?"
"Years ago and for reasons that are none of your business I swore a mighty oath never again to obey the orders of a man. That's why I've been ragging along after you — because you ordered me not to be concerned with your welfare. So of course I am. But now you've ordered me to free you, and thus I can't."
"Listen to me carefully," I said. "If you disobey an order from me, then you've obeyed my previous order not to obey me. So your oath is meaningless."
"I know. It's quite dizzying." The fox lay down, tucking her paws beneath her chest. "Here's another one: There's a barber in Seville who shaves everyone who doesn't shave himself, but nobody else. Now—"
"Please," I said." I beg you. Sweet fox, dear creature, most adorable of animals... If you would be so kind as to untie me out of the goodness of your heart and of your own free will, I'd be forever grateful to you."