By Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]
Chapter Twenty-Five "A Feast of the Gods"
Granny Pansy was a windmill of activity. She had used the four-arms spell before, but rarely, as it made her shoulders ache for weeks where the extra arms grew from the sockets. Granny Pansy, each of her four arms moving with blurry rapidity at a different task, also managed to call out about a dozen instructions per minute. Granny Pansy didn't need a spell to do that. Being a mother, and then a Grandmother was training enough for that.
Wizards and witches were busy all over the Tones' house, all following an elaborate plan that Granny Pansy had cooked up after the Gods of Autumn had attacked. The house had a smell of ambrosia. Appetites were made keen for a mile around. Whatever Granny Pansy was working on this time, certainly didn't smell like boiling laundry. Some of the best chefs of the tribe were engaged in the work, but they had had to send a lot of hands out over the countryside to combat the Gods of Autumn's misdeeds and the gullible humans that they were beguiling and batting about the way a cat bats a mouse.
"The news everywhere is bad, bad, bad" worried Great Uncle Charlie, just back from a balloon survey of the greater Treashurstaene area. His face resembled the timeless crevasses of Everest, and his hair was as puffed out as a dandelion.
"There's been another clash between the dockworkers and the police at Tilly Lingersall's funeral. Some politicos jumped up on the casket and made a rousing oration, which inspired the hearers to pull down the gates at the docks. Twenty men were arrested, and three are in the hospital. Berny Cottswold, with his new police powers, is deputizing all members of his Political Committee as armed militia to, quote: 'restore the safety and dignity of Traeshurstaene.' There's double the number of car accidents; people keep swearing that they see another car coming down the road in their lane, and that they don't see the tree or wall they they wind up hitting. The funny thing is, the car they all describe as coming at them sounds more like a chariot than an automobile. So, I'd bet that's Adsagsona at work, weaving her illusions. And there's more arguments and fistfights than ever--family against family, and families divided against themselves. Like this one, although this one hasn't yet come to blows."
"Nor will it," averred Granny Pansy. "I've had to promise Gwynnith that we'd all be out of here by sundown tomorrow, though. Sarah's coming back to the house. I'll count that as good news, even though it puts us in a pickle. If we don't beat the Gods of Autumn now, moving the witches' campsite will be the least of our worries."
"Worst of all, Sarah seems to've switched sides. She's in Plimsoul's house, and has been spotted all over town with that Eva." Great Uncle Charlie couldn't think about it without a shiver at the very idea. "And besides all the rest, the Mickleswift's still dry from Aerfen's tantrum the other night, and the town's supply of water's running low. The only ray of sunshine is the return of Dar, which in the larger scheme of things is rather insignificant. And before we got him back, you had already promised you-know-what to you-know-whom."
Granny Pansy stopped stirring the cauldron before her, dicing the herbs behind her, turning a page in the spell book beside her, and finishing the last knot on a spell-shawl she'd need to wear if her idea was going to ever even happen, let alone succeed. All of her shoulders slumped, and Granny Pansy looked a bit like a disappointed spider.
"You needn't remind me, Charlie. My only hope now is that they don't have the talent required to put that spell to effective use."
"Sorry, Doris. But on top of everything else, a golden barge has appeared on the horizon, with great bellying sails of striped silver and copper. There's some sort of complicated emblem on the sails; looks like a black rat rampant on a shield in the middle of it all. And no wind to blow the sails full, but still they strain and the ship moves forward."
"Perhaps a contingent of soceresses from Eva's old country," mused Granny Pansy pensively.
"There's gossip everywhere that she's been made the Crannock-in-Chief."
"That's ridiculous," objected Granny Pansy peevishly. "There hasn't been a Crannoch here in five hundred years."
"I know. And with unknown friends sailing in from her native soil, we could have a lot more on our hands than just taming the Gods of Autumn."
"One task at a time knits the wisest rhyme, as our Granny Filomena always instructed."
"Right you are, Doris," Great Uncle Charlie said supportively. "What's next?"
But in his heart, Great Uncle Charlie was more worried than ever. When Granny Pansy quoted Granny Filomena, it usually meant that she didn't know what she was doing.
* * * *
A cold noon came over the town square. Normally, every lunchtime, the square was dotted with office and dock workers mingling, unpacking their home-made sandwiches and lemony ice teas and treats or after lunch pastries. Fellows from The Dublin House and Cwilliam's Pub brought their beer out onto the lawn, and their steaming plates too. The pub owners didn't mind, for neither of them had ever lost a plate or a customer from the practice. But today the square lay deserted. Crumpled lunch papers from festive mealtimes only a few weeks ago lay in soggy corners of the square.
Into the empty square, a rag-tag parade of cars began to enter quietly. The first cars laid out big rectangles of picnic blankets of all manner and variety. Some with leaping deer, some with a paisley pattern, some plain brown or green. Eventually, the blankets, laid end to end, covered the entire square. Those who had brought the blankets and laid them down, didn't sit to enjoy their lunches then, but rather got back in their cars and drove away.
After a minute, with some folks starting to gather by their office windows suspiciously (for these hadn't been the best of days lately), a second parade of cars rolled in. These cars, and a few pick-up trucks, changed the atmosphere of the square considerably. As they unpacked huge crates of oranges, biscuits the size of whole frying pans, buckets of jellies and jams and a wheel barrow slopping over with marmalade, a smell of ambrosia began to permeate the area.
In three of the pick-up trucks, huge cauldrons of piping hot ambrosia were taken down very carefully, by forklift, and wheeled into the middle of the town green, which was now a patchwork of picnic blankets. Next to the cauldrons, a giant ladle was brought out and laid to rest, the size of a mop bucket with a broom handle attached to it. From a beat-up old Rolls Royce that had just arrived late to the party, five silver drinking vessels emerged, each as large a punch bowl. The first was carried by Granny Pansy, with two of her four arms tucked safely under a cloak, and away from prying eyes. Great Uncle Charlie carried a second one, the steam from the heated ambrosia fogging up his glasses. Barnabas carried two by himself, wearing one on his head. And Abbey and Shelly brought the last one out of the trunk, swinging it low between them because of its weight.
The five bowls were put in the center of the blanketed square, forming an implied pentagram. This was as per Granny Pansy's instructions.
Others were still unpacking yet more foods and goods, linked sausages as long as a coiled garden hose, and five times as thick. One woman, with a pink bonnet tied tight under her chin, wheeled over a jug of cream and an egg beater. She put the beater into the cream, and, singing under her breath, and beating the cream, quickly churned out several gallons of clotted cream. This was a fine thing indeed, for her fellow witch pulled about a dozen slices of toast from the breast pocket of his suit and, tossing them in the air and saying "Inflatus!" in a serious way, watched as they landed perfectly on a decorated plate a third witch had rolled out onto the square edgewise and the let fall flat. Clotted cream and toast is served, if you please.
A truck from the local orchard backed up to one side of the square and dumped a load of fresh apples into an inflated kiddie pool. Workmen and wizards together heave-hoed many bushels of grapes, both seedless and seeded into the mix. Loaves of cinnamon bread had been baked specially for the occasion, the size of lion seals, and twisted into the shapes of various deities. Looking closely, anyone in the town could by now, after the days of troubles and inventive attacks by the Gods of Autumn, have picked out Afagddu with his shield of black bread and his sword of carved licorice. Also there, together as twins because they had been baked too close to each other in the improvised oven of the Tone's spare garage, were Agrona and Aeron, their mighty arms puffed up all the more muscularly by a too generous helping of yeast in the dough. Their eyes glared out from under huge brows as deep as caves. The eyes were delicious black olives fixed in their places by cocktail stirrers. Asdagona had a string of delicious pearl onions over her bodice, which flowed into her running legs. Aerfen's face was clear and clean and lively-eyed in a twirled circle of sweet and sour bread, like a medallion to be worn on the forehead of an elephant.
The last item of the feast were the flowers. All the girls of Ridgefield High had been recruited to ferry in all the flowers one armful at a time. About a hundred girls came traipsing by, throwing their flowers as they danced around the edge of the square. Granny Pansy and all the witches and wizards stood by, their hands politely folded, and sang the enchanting spell as the girls whirled around in a ring, tossing fistfuls of bluebells, and handfuls of daisies and periwinkles, and all manner of wildflowers which the Gods of Autumn prized above all else. For this feast was a trap, and the Gods of Autumn were to be its victims.
Once the girls were done, and the spell carefully chanted, all of the wizards and all of the witches got back in their cars and left the square, only Great Uncle Charlie loitering to send a pentagram flare high into the sky just before hopping into his Rolls Royce and motoring away as the final signal that the trap was set. The Gods of Autumn had become wary of the presence of the pestiferous wizards and witches over the last few days, and were none too anxious for a renewal of direct hostilities. After the flare went off in the cold sky of late October, Great Uncle Charlie and the others drove quietly away. Now the only thing left to do was wait.
The pale faces at the office windows, surprised as they were by the recent activities that had taken place in the square, and wary enough not to venture outside as soon as Great Uncle Charles' Rolls Royce had pulled away, did not have long to wait. Window by window, the faces framed by the panes went from surprised to astonished to stunned as a series of house-high shadows began to fall across the square, obscuring the bright light of noon.
"Ahhh...." began Afagddu with satisfaction. "A propitiation."
The other gods relished the idea that the mortals of Traeshurestaene had come to their senses enough to offer the fruits of the earth to the harvest-minded Gods of Autumn. It had been many centuries indeed since they had been so honored. Immortality is too long a day without the proper recognition to go with it. The sweetness of such acknowledgment lent a savor to the fruits that they were about to devour, the ambrosia they were about to drink, the breads they were about to tear and eat.
The Gods of Autumn came with their usual grace and, after a look around the immediate vicinity for pestiferous witches, sat down gladly to this meal so obviously arranged in their honor in the center of the town. Each god began with their favorite foods, Afagddu tearing at the black bread and bitter lemons. Aerfen drank clear gallons of crystal water flavored with citrus. Aeron and Agrona gnashed the sausage links from either end, and then cuffed each other over who would consume the last link caught in the middle. Oranges went into maws like popped candy. Each god tore into their breads with satisfaction at the end of the meal, large even for them. This bread they washed down with the silver ewers of ambrosia. They were all surprised at this, for they had been convinced that the making of ambrosia had been lost since the days when the world was young and fresh. But it tasted as well as it ever had, deep and refreshing, and the gods were filled with a rare hilarity, and began to dance around the square with lithesome step.
The dancing of the Gods of Autumn is a rare thing by human reckoning, and it should be both gravely and gladly noted that those who were blessed enough to witness their dance from the windows surrounding the square, all rushed outside to join the gods in their grave hilarity. Man and woman danced in tune with the eternal Gods of Autumn, smiling gladsome in their hearts, and light in the heels and happy in their eyes to be so blessed. Spontaneously, many of the women dancing began to sing, and Aerfen, as quick and graceful as ever, took up the tune with a silvery voice that fell among them like spring rain. Even Afagddu added his basso profundo, and at the signal, the men of the town chanted along as best they could, mingling a bass thump into the increasingly rowdy dance. For now the dance and the song became like a fast-stepping square dance, and the dancers whirled and lifted each other up and did not grow tired.
END OF CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE