“Exactlylike that, Bradley,” Gretsella said. “What a perfect way of putting it.”
Bradley beamed. Gretsella went in for the killing blow. “And, you know, all of the most fashionable courts have jesters. Magnetia was telling me so just the other day. It would look funny if you were the only king whodidn’thave a jester.”
“Your lady mother is right, Your Majesty,” Janet put in. “As your jester, I’m also sworn to relay all of the court gossip back to you, so that you can never be taken off guard by treachery. It’s a very important role, Your Majesty. As yourloyal subject, I feel that it’s my duty to urge you to hire another jester as soon as possible. That way, you won’t be left without an essential member of your palace staff.”
“And,” Gretsella added before Bradley’s poor overheated brain had any time to percolate any stray thoughts, “if you keep Janet as your jester, she’ll be able to provide entertainment at my feast tonight.”
Just as Gretsella had anticipated, the mention of a party perked Bradley up immediately. “I suppose that’s right,” he said. “Itisnice to have music at a party.”
“Exactly. Good! It’s settled, then,” Gretsella said, and moved on to the next subject without giving Bradley the chance to contemplate what had just transpired. “And I’ll need you to send someone into the dungeon to get my things.”
“But what on earth are your things doing in the dungeon, Mother?” Bradley asked with great evident astonishment.
“Never you mind, Bradley,” Gretsella said, and within two minutes, King Bradley was happily sending his servants scurrying hither and yon in service to every one of Gretsella’s wicked ends.
Skip Notes
*1It isn’t said by anyone who has even a slight familiarity with the archeological record, but it’s definitely said.
*2Syphilis.
*3Being illegitimate, Horace had not enjoyed the privilege of a princely education and was not very good at spelling. He was, however, very good at having people’s heads put onto spikes, so no one ever corrected him.
*4Old High Evermorish was only ever spoken by a few members of Evermore’s ancient tribal nobility, and it is notoriously nearly impossible to learn. In modern Evermore, a small guild of about half a dozen scholars of Old High Evermorish charges exorbitant fees to anyone who wants an impressive-looking runic inscription for a gravestone or marriage certificate or family coat of arms. Cynics have suggested that the members of this guild are wily old frauds who’ve made up a bunch of interesting-looking scribbles in order to sell fake cultural heritage to upwardly mobile types, and that true Old High Evermorish, if it ever existed, has long since died and been completely forgotten. Less cynical Evermorians suspect that the cynics might be onto something, but they like how the genuine reproduction ancient tablet they bought looks on the mantelpiece, so try not to think about it too deeply.
*5They’re known mostly for hard cheeses, and for the kind of traditional folk dancing that’s both uninteresting to watch and exhausting to participate in for longer than almost exactly one and a half minutes.[*6]
*6One of the most famous traditional Evermorish folk dances is called Luulabennagalbolein, which in Old High Evermorish means “dance in which we wave heavy wooden clubs in very slow circles over our heads until we feel tired.”[*7]
*7Allegedly. See note four.
Chapter 5
In Which Gretsella Surveils the Terrain
After Gretsella was fully dressed in her own clothes again, and Bradley fully and joyfully engaged in planning the welcome party, Gretsella decided to make a more complete survey of her new domain. She started at the bottom, in the kitchen, which she thought ought to be considered the most important part of any house. One could easily do without a sitting room—indeed, being able to honestly claim that an unfortunate workplace accident had caused one’s sitting room to sink into a flaming sulfureous pit was just the ticket for warding off a sudden infestation ofguests—but no self-respecting witch could do without a kitchen. A witch needed a nice, clean, modern kitchen for making potions. And pies (when protected from the prying eyes of members of the public, who were better off believing that witches subsisted onmidnight mists and salamander tongues). Gretsella did like a nice piece of pie.
As soon as Gretsella made it into the kitchen, she could tell that there was something gravely amiss. The entire atmosphere of the room was wrong. A large kitchen should be hot and loud and full of people rushing around through banks of good-smelling steam and getting cursed at by the head cooks and burning their hands on scalding pans and generally suffering enormously for the sake of quivering aspics and golden loaves of bread and roasts dripping fragrant grease all over enormous mounds of crispy potatoes. This kitchen had the screaming, rushing, and suffering, but all of this seemed to be in service to nothing but chaos itself. As a philosophicallywickedwitch, Gretsella approved. As a witch who looked forward to a nice supper in the evenings, she didn’t approve in the slightest.
There were a number of figures prominent to the scene. The one who first drew Gretsella’s eye was propped against a barrel in a corner near the stove. He was pale and long and thin, and bundled up with an old-fashioned kerchief tied around his neck, as if he were suffering from a chill. He was smoking a large pipe in a way that suggested the effort exhausted him. A nearly empty bottle of wine stood at his right elbow, while at his left sat a shorter, stouter man with whom he was engaged in an extremely languorous game of whist. Around these two bolted a number of young women and younger boys, all pursued by a large woman who kept shouting things like “Isthatwhat you call a clean pot?” after them. Atone point, one of the young boys tripped over the thin man’s legs, and one of the girls lifted the boy to his feet and hurried him along as if he’d tripped over a tree root. It seemed, in fact, as if everyone in the room were doing their best to pretend that the thin man wasn’t there at all—except for the large woman, who kept casting scornful glances at him and then sighing like a dog lying down on arug.
A Digression on the Subject of Colorful Minor Characters
Ahighly reliable characteristic of books is that characters the protagonist briefly encounters in passing tend to be, on the whole, much more entertaining than the protagonist himself. This can be blamed on a few basic difficulties with the ways that a story functions. The first is that the protagonist has a lot of plot to accomplish, so he can’t waste too much time bumbling, prancing, or making merry japes when he’s busy being forced to fight his fellow prisoners to the death in the gladiatorial arena (this being a fate that befalls protagonists at a rate an astonishing 4,500 percent higher than it does the general population). The second is that the kind of bumbling, japes, et cetera that amuse the reader for a few paragraphs can become irritating when extended over several hundred pages. The third is that the author has fallen so deeply and thoroughly in love with herprotagonist that, like the doting mother of a jaundiced and cross-eyed infant, she assumes that his charms are self-explanatory, and thus fails to make them clear within the narrative itself. The fourth is that everyone, including writers of stories, has gotten so used to protagonists never being red-faced cooks dressed in floury aprons that it never occurs to them to write one that way.
The fifth reason is the very worst to contemplate. The terrible truth is that protagonists are written to be how we would like to imagine ourselves, and the colorful side characters are how we fear we look to other people. Here we are, striding around accomplishing all of our very important tasks, thinking complicated and nuanced thoughts about politics and mortality and our relationships with our mothers. There we go, driving with skill and precision, making love in a way that nearly brings our partners to tears of ecstasy, and parrying any insults with exquisitely witty ripostes. How cruel, how monstrous it would be if we were forced to see ourselves as we’re afraid other people do: as that sloppy woman in a wrinkled dress who broke a lull at a party with a tasteless, too-loud joke; as that pompous man with thinning hair who cut someone off in traffic the other day and ruins first kisses with the erratic thrusting of his tongue; as that preposterous personage who persists in wearing unflattering hats and drawing mediocre pictures in coffee shops, all the while hoping that someone will notice and think,Ooh, how interesting!
We are all, as horrible as it is to contemplate, colorful minor characters, walking around with a pimple on our chin thatwe hope no one notices, with one patch that we forgot to shave, with a strange-sounding sneeze, with coffee breath. We’re all stuck here, exposed like turtles on high rocks, forced to live out every day without even the smallest quests or prophecies to wrap around our deficiencies and make them into something meaningful. What a mercy it is to open a book and briefly become the hero, our flaws adding depth and complexity to our character, our mistakes only serving to heighten the narrative tension, our quiet terror that we’re too insignificant to matter at all submerged, if only for a moment, in the rushing river of astory.
Chapter 5.5
Back to the Kitchen We Abandoned in Pursuit of the Most Recent Digression
Into this tableau drifted Gretsella, attempting to look like someone who had wandered into the kitchen in pursuit of the scent of freshly baked dinner rolls and had absolutely no secret political motivations whatsoever. As she always felt confident in everything she did, she felt entirely confident that she was succeeding in her gambit, and remained cheerfully oblivious to the skeptical glances being cast at her from every direction until the stout woman placed herself directly in Gretsella’s path and said, “We’re not hiring anyone, and we’re not buying anything.”
“I haven’t brought anything to sell, and I’ve never worked an honest day in my life,” Gretsella said proudly, if inaccurately (like most witches, she had spent some time in the service industry before she was able to support herself with her witchcraft full-time). “I am Gretsella, King Bradley’s mother.”
Gretsella watched with interest as everyone within earshot began flapping around like bats trying to escape from a chimney. There was such a mass adjusting of aprons that it kicked up a breeze.
