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Authors: Susannah Appelbaum
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with a tentative finger. Worse still, he was soon to find that under no circumstances was Trindle agreeable to deporting Six.
Apparently the trip upriver to the dismal city of Rocamadour was to be made even more disagreeable than the taster originally thought.
Chapter Eighteen
The Cure
P eps D. Roux had quietly taken to bed in his new home on the
Trindletrip
, where he was convalescing alone—dismal and feverish. He vaguely felt the engines come alive and the boat take on a more buoyant quality. He imagined the bed beneath him floating along the Marcel, raftlike, and when he forced open his bloodshot eyes, he was at a momentary loss as to his whereabouts. When he noticed several chatty partridges perched upon the shelf in the upper corner of his cabin, he thought nothing of it and asked them kindly to leave him be. When they became insulted (Peps had tried very hard to be polite) and altered themselves into hideous vultures to demonstrate their displeasure, the trestleman hid beneath his blankets shivering. When the vultures then began swooping about his small cabin, bashing into walls and upsetting furniture, letting their filth spread upon the floor below, Peps cowered deeper. Beneath his bedding, he heard their hissing, which soon became an outright argument as to how best atrestleman tasted—and it was only then that he finally dismissed the birds as delirium. But to be sure, he remained beneath the piles of blankets.
Which was where Ivy found him.
She and Six had been exploring the boat when she came upon Peps’s sickroom. At first she mistook the bed as simply unmade, but as she flung open a window to refresh the stale air, she heard a pitiful cry. Its source, apparently, was beneath the bedclothes, which she also threw off. Finding the proud trestleman a mere shadow of himself—pale and drawn—alarmed her, and when he began babbling about mean-spirited birds bent on his destruction, she went at once to find Axle.
It was generally agreed that Peps’s ill fortune was brought about by his move to the houseboat. Everyone knew trestlemen did not fare well on water, especially after the disappearance of the alewives who ruled the waterways. It was as if he were thumbing his nose at fortune by relocating away from the natural abode of his kind—that is, beneath a bridge. Since he had chosen to live
upon
water rather than
over
it, well, it should come as no surprise he should end up unwell.
Unwell he was.
“Ivy.” His eyes fluttered open; his voice was raspy and hoarse. He was a mere lump in his bed, covers replaced tightly to his chin. “Help me,” he cried miserably.
“I will, Peps,” she assured him softly at his bedside. Theothers aboard the boat—Axle, Rowan, and Trindle—stood somberly behind her, having come when Ivy had raised the alarm.
In her workshop apron were a few odds and ends, a spare river stone that she favored, various-sized corks, Dumbcane’s fanciful letter
C
, which she had taken from the shop. In short, nothing of any help. Everything that she needed was strewn about on the Knox.
She looked down at Peps’s distorted face and held his cold hand. She parted the few clumps of hair that lay across the trestleman’s proud brow and placed her hand upon his forehead. But it was here that her own attempts at relieving Peps’s discomfort began and ended, and another, more powerful force made itself known.
An unwelcome smell—the stench from Dumbcane’s—briefly filled her nostrils, and her light-headedness returned, while quickly the floor, the boat itself, seemed at once to heave a great sigh. Blinking, she saw not the
Trindletrip
, nor the murky Marcel, but a small, eerie copse of alder trees.
She was somehow wrapped in a shroud of mist and shadow and felt at once larger than the longest river and smaller than the most modest acorn. Wisps of ragged fog caught upon the unfriendly branches of the wood, small, wretched clouds torn from the sky.
Peps was there, but he was not. He
Apparently the trip upriver to the dismal city of Rocamadour was to be made even more disagreeable than the taster originally thought.
Chapter Eighteen
The Cure
P eps D. Roux had quietly taken to bed in his new home on the
Trindletrip
, where he was convalescing alone—dismal and feverish. He vaguely felt the engines come alive and the boat take on a more buoyant quality. He imagined the bed beneath him floating along the Marcel, raftlike, and when he forced open his bloodshot eyes, he was at a momentary loss as to his whereabouts. When he noticed several chatty partridges perched upon the shelf in the upper corner of his cabin, he thought nothing of it and asked them kindly to leave him be. When they became insulted (Peps had tried very hard to be polite) and altered themselves into hideous vultures to demonstrate their displeasure, the trestleman hid beneath his blankets shivering. When the vultures then began swooping about his small cabin, bashing into walls and upsetting furniture, letting their filth spread upon the floor below, Peps cowered deeper. Beneath his bedding, he heard their hissing, which soon became an outright argument as to how best atrestleman tasted—and it was only then that he finally dismissed the birds as delirium. But to be sure, he remained beneath the piles of blankets.
Which was where Ivy found him.
She and Six had been exploring the boat when she came upon Peps’s sickroom. At first she mistook the bed as simply unmade, but as she flung open a window to refresh the stale air, she heard a pitiful cry. Its source, apparently, was beneath the bedclothes, which she also threw off. Finding the proud trestleman a mere shadow of himself—pale and drawn—alarmed her, and when he began babbling about mean-spirited birds bent on his destruction, she went at once to find Axle.
It was generally agreed that Peps’s ill fortune was brought about by his move to the houseboat. Everyone knew trestlemen did not fare well on water, especially after the disappearance of the alewives who ruled the waterways. It was as if he were thumbing his nose at fortune by relocating away from the natural abode of his kind—that is, beneath a bridge. Since he had chosen to live
upon
water rather than
over
it, well, it should come as no surprise he should end up unwell.
Unwell he was.
“Ivy.” His eyes fluttered open; his voice was raspy and hoarse. He was a mere lump in his bed, covers replaced tightly to his chin. “Help me,” he cried miserably.
“I will, Peps,” she assured him softly at his bedside. Theothers aboard the boat—Axle, Rowan, and Trindle—stood somberly behind her, having come when Ivy had raised the alarm.
In her workshop apron were a few odds and ends, a spare river stone that she favored, various-sized corks, Dumbcane’s fanciful letter
C
, which she had taken from the shop. In short, nothing of any help. Everything that she needed was strewn about on the Knox.
She looked down at Peps’s distorted face and held his cold hand. She parted the few clumps of hair that lay across the trestleman’s proud brow and placed her hand upon his forehead. But it was here that her own attempts at relieving Peps’s discomfort began and ended, and another, more powerful force made itself known.
An unwelcome smell—the stench from Dumbcane’s—briefly filled her nostrils, and her light-headedness returned, while quickly the floor, the boat itself, seemed at once to heave a great sigh. Blinking, she saw not the
Trindletrip
, nor the murky Marcel, but a small, eerie copse of alder trees.
She was somehow wrapped in a shroud of mist and shadow and felt at once larger than the longest river and smaller than the most modest acorn. Wisps of ragged fog caught upon the unfriendly branches of the wood, small, wretched clouds torn from the sky.
Peps was there, but he was not. He
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