Alas, the boy didn’t have his bindle and was by unfortunate circumstances required to wear the oversized clothes of the rude and belligerent Beyonder lad named Chad. But he did possess one thing that he’d had the foresight to keep upon his person: a watch — a beautiful gold Geneva watch that he had taken from Mr. Chowser’s nightstand drawer so that he would have something to sell in the Terra Incognita when funds became necessary. Yes, it was stealing; but Newman had every intention of eventually paying Mr. Chowser treble-fold what the watch was worth.
As the boy attempted to reach down into his right trowser pocket to confirm that what he felt bouncing round in there was, in fact, the precious watch, he discovered that there was something papery attached to his honey-sticky hand. It was a paper that had affixed itself to his palm as he had rolled about the floor of the Ryersbach parlour. He hadn’t time to stop and look at the paper except to see what it said at the top — three words that made little sense to him: “The Tiadaghton Project.” Newman peeled the paper from his hand but did not discard it, stuffing it instead down into the other pocket to be read and considered more carefully when it was safe to do so.
Without thinking, Newman Trimmers found himself running in the direction of Dingley Dell. Newman Trimmers was running home.
Chapter the Ninth. Monday, June 23, 2003
ere is Dingley Dell as it appeared to me on that early summer morning in 2003 when my brother and I made our way on foot to the Northern Ridge that separated this portion of our homeland from the Outland: a large valley with rolling green hills and a motley patchwork of agricultural colour, bounded on the north by a steep rocky incline and on the south by a ridge much different from the other: black and scored, half carved away to extract the coal that had for over a century warmed our homes and cooked our food and besooted our walls and chimneys and the faces of our industrious colliers. In the southeast was the iron pit from which we drew that which made our little world so hard and black and solid and venerable.
The air was clear and bright this morning, and one could see stretching far eastward and westward two distinct forests of some expanse, which sloped upwards as well, but with gentler acclivity than the Northern and Southern ridges. As rite of passage, each of us in his youth had climbed wantonly through those leafy opposing portions of our perimeter, but not much was there to be gleaned by them, save the fact that it was quite easy to get oneself lost therein (once one passed the open vestigial stumpland — evidential of years of harvest by previous generations of Dinglian timbermen — and the currently cultivable timber sward).
The eastern and western woods carried additional risk as well; both displayed a propensity for growing thick and dark with only a short venturing trespass into their beshadowed breasts. And if one pushed far enough into the heart of that sylvan darkness, one reached a tall fence, topped with coiled barbed wire and resembling in construction that same fence which trailed upon the Summit — a fence that paradoxically intimidated the onlooking Dinglian through its impounding insinuation and at the same time contributed to a feeling of protection from unknown forces without.
Having no other dell with which to compare our beloved Dingley (our ninth — and apparently the final — edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica offering illustrations of flamingos, and coal cutting machines and Vatican marble sculpture, but not a single, solitary view of an exemplary rusticated valley), we were forever at a loss to know just how our vale might appear to an outsider, the tradesmen, for their own part, taking care not to offer commentary on anything supplementary to their transactions — not even to note the clemency or inclemency of the day’s weather!
In silence my brother and I marched past gardens in full blow, serenaded by the happy chirrup of birds that knew nothing of fractured hearts and human loss. In that early season of our journey through dim daybreak, it was easy to forget that Augustus and I were anywhere but the most felicitous place on earth, for quickly does one enter that part of the valley where the hand of man is in slim evidence save for an old, dilapidated cow house, the surviving architectural remnant of a long abandoned farm, where in better light one might read vestiges of the paint-peeling advertisement on its side: “Limbkins Lard — Delectably pure — never goes rancid.”
With the cresting of the morning sun over the treetops of the eastern wood, I snuffed out the lantern that had kindled our early steps, inhaled the fresh air of dewy dawn into my lungs and sighed. Here was paradise qualified.
As Gus and I gained that place at which the ridge began its steep ascent, where the foot-and-barrow trail came down to meet the terminus of the Ridge Spur off the Riparian Road, we heard behind us the sound of hoof and wooden wheel upon damp, clodded earth. A gig was approaching, instantly recognisable by its fringed covering and the dappled bay mare that pulled it as belonging to my friend Sheriff Vincent Muntle.
Muntle was as breathless as if he had run all the way, and upon reaching us gave a light tug upon the reins and alighted without taking even a moment to collect himself or to pat down his wind-frowzed hair, standing out from both sides of his head like fuzzy, pronged blinders. If my friend had worn a hat, it had flown off at some point along the way, and he had not halted himself to retrieve it.
“I caught you! Capital!” said he, with a smile less of greeting than of relief.
“Are you coming along?” sought Augustus of our unanticipated companion.
“I’m climbing the ridge to be sure, but alas for you, Augustus, I’ll be doing so alone.”
“Alone?”
Muntle nodded and turned to me. “This is why I’ve come so quickly. To tell you that it’s no longer possible for you to meet with the tradesmen.”
As Augustus stared in puzzlement at the sheriff of Dingley Dell, I solicited an explanation. “What’s happened, Muntle? Why has permission for my ascent been rescinded?”
“Because it was foolish of me to have granted you leave for the têteà-tête in the first place. I hadn’t the authority to do so and should have known better.” The large man who stood before us, drest differently than when I’d last seen him — with a more formal equipage in the manner of official lawman: all frogs and buttons and soldier-like drab — heaved a heavy sigh, the dreaded thing having now been said and his duty of interception and interdiction duly performed. He took out a pocket-comb, and began to apply it to his retreating bear-grease-pomaded hair, as if to make himself look more presentable to the Beyonders, kemptness and hygiene apparently being key to any successful interchange with an Outlander.
“Do you expect Gus and me to believe what you’ve just told us?” I asked. “Whatever your reservations about our meeting with the tradesman weren’t newly born this morning. Why in truth have you changed your mind?” My expression of bewilderment at that moment must surely have replicated the confused look of my brother.