Land of Unreason (3 page)

            "Pah!" said she.
"Like a stockfish, you put it? Say a stock rather; here's no enchantment
but a booby with barely wit enough to live. Oh, I'm well served." She
gazed down at Barber, with an expression of scorn on her delicately cut
features. "And here he's brought this great oafish ill-favored creature,
beyond doubt the least attractive changeling of the current reign."

            Barber was being
scrutinized. "Think you His Radiance will accept the thing?" inquired
one doubtfully.

            The tall lady sighed.
"We can but try. Mayhap 'twill find him in his mad humor and so suit. See
to the object; we return within an hour." She swept off into a little
grove of trees through which the pillars of some structure gleamed whitely.

            The one who had spoken last,
a winged female about four feet high, bent over Barber, examining his pajamas.
"He has arrived without his clout," she said. "Have we
one?"

            A square of whitish cloth
was passed from hand to hand. The four-footer folded it diagonally and tried to
roll Barber over.

            "Hey!" he
protested. "What's the idea?"

            "The changeling
speaks," said one of them, in an astonished tone. "Faith, and
well," replied another, admiringly. "What precocity! His Radiance
will, after all, be pleased." And half a dozen of them went off into peals
of gay, tinkling laughter. Barber could see neither rhyme nor reason to it, but
he was not granted the opportunity, as at the same moment he was seized by a
dozen pairs of busy hands. They were trying to diaper him; the idea was so
comic that he could not stop laughing enough to resist. But neither could these
queer little people control his movements well enough to get the diaper on, and
the struggle ended with three or four of them collapsing on top of him in a
tangle of arms and legs.

            The four-footer said
gravely: "Marry, 'tis no small problem with so lusty a babe. A very
Wayland or Brian of Born when a gets growth, I'll warrant. Yet stay, friends;
this is a wise, intelligent brat that talks like a lawyer, that is, never but
to his own profit. He merely protests that we put the clout on over his
breeches when it should go under. Come, once more!"

            She gave a little leap,
flapping her wings in excitement, and was bounced a dozen yards into the air by
the effort. Barber gaped, following her with his eyes, and felt his pajamas
seized by hands eager to tear them off him. He clutched, turned, swung his arms
in good, angry embarrassment, then broke loose—even the largest of them did not
seem very strong—and backed a few steps against one of the trees, a torn
pajama-leg dangling about his feet. Half a dozen of those with wings were in
the air. He could hear the whisper of their flight behind the tree, and a
chilly hand, small like a child's, plucked from behind at the neck of his
too-light upper garment.

            "Listen!" he
cried. "Unless this is one of those nightmares where you go down Fifth
Avenue without your clothes, my name's Fred Barber, and I'll keep my pants,
please. You can trust me not to disgrace them. Now, will somebody tell me what
this is all about, and why you want to put that thing on me?"

            He pointed to the enormous
diaper, which had slipped from the hand of its holder and lay spread and
tousled on the grass. There was a momentary silence, through which one or two
of the aerial creatures planed lightly to the ground, spilling the air from
their wings like pigeons. Through it the observant part of Barber's mind
shouted to him that in dreams one does not speak but communicate, thought to
thought; nor do the fantasies born of head injury follow from step to step.
This must, then—

            The brownie with the wall
eyes had stepped forward, pulled off a striped stocking-cap and was bowing to
the ground. "Worshipful babe," he said, in a high, squeaky voice,
"you do speak in terms rank reasonable; which, since all reason is folly
and I am the court's chief fool, to wit, its philosopher, I give myself to
answer in the same terms. As to your first premise, that you dream, why, that's
in nature a thing unknowable; for if it were true, the dream itself would
furnish the only evidence by which it could be judged. You will agree,
worshipful babe, that it's not good law, nor sense either, that one should be
at once judge, jury, prosecutor and condemned in his own case. Therefore—"

            He was thrust aside in
mid-speech by the little winged creature, who cried: "Oh, la! Never speak
reasonably to a philosopher, Master Barber; it leads to much words and little
wit. What this learned dunce would say in an hour or two is that you find
yourself at the court of King Oberon—"

            "As mortals have
before," chorused half a dozen of them, singing the words like a refrain.

            "—About to be made a
present of to His Radiance—"

            "Do you mean this is
really Fairyland?" Barber's voice was incredulous. There was a great burst
of laughter from the queer little people all round him, some holding their
sides, some slapping knees, others rolling on the ground with mirth till they
bumped into each other. Inconsequentially, they turned the movement into a
series of acrobatic somersaults and games of leapfrog, laughing all the while.

            "Where thought you
else?" demanded the winged lady.

            "I didn't. But look
here—I'm not sure that I want to be a present to King Oberon, like a—like
a—" His mind fumbled for the impressive simile, all the time busy with the
thought that, in spite of its sequence and vividness, this must be some special
kind of hallucination. "—Like an object," he finished lamely. Over
behind his interlocutor the playful hobgoblins were slowing down like a weary
phonograph record. She held up two little hands with jewels flashing on the
fingers.

            "Oh, la, Sir Babe, you
to question the desire of a crowned king? Why, put it if you must that it's a
thing natural, like being born or having two legs. You have no election in the
matter. Nay,-more—no mortal ever but gained by doing the King's will of
Fairyland."

            Once more Barber experienced
the operation of that curious sixth sense. There was something definitely
untrue about that last statement. But this was his game; this was the kind of
verbal fencing he had been trained in, and if this whole crazy business were an
illusion, so much the better, he could argue himself out of it.

            "No doubt," he
said evenly, "I shall benefit. But why pick on me? Certainly there must be
dozens of people willing to be—pet poodles for King Oberon. You say it's a
natural thing. Well, after all, nature has laws, and I'd like to know under
what one I was kidnaped. And I'm not a babe."

            Once more there was the
paroxysm of laughter from the crowd, and the ensuing antics. The winged lady
looked bewildered and seemed about to burst into tears, but the brownie
philosopher struggled from the grip of a dwarf who had been holding a hand over
his mouth, and stepped forward, bowing.

            "Nay, Lady
Violanta," he said. "By y'r leave, I'll speak, for I perceive by my
arts that this is a most sapient babe, so well versed in precepts logical that
he'll crush your feather spirit like a bull a butterfly. Let me but have him;
I'll play matador to his manners." He bowed, addressing himself to Barber.

            "Masterful babe, in all
you say, you are wrong but once; that is, at every point and all simultaneous,
like fly-blown carrion. Item: you do protest your age, which is a thing
comparative, and with relation to your present company, you're but a bud, an
unhatched embryo. Hence we dispose of your fundamental premise, that you have
years and wisdom to criticize the way the world is made to wag; which is an
enterprise for sound, mature philosophical judgment.

            "Item: 'tis evident
advantage to everyone, man or moppet, when the world wags smooth. Indeed,
whatever tranquility exists in individual doings is but show and false seeming,
like the bark on a rotten apple tree, till those matters that concern the
general be at rest. How says Cicero? 'Obedience to reason, which is the law of
the universe controlling high and low alike, is the effort by which man
realizes his own reason.' Now since there lies a coil between our king and
queen that can only be dispersed by the presentation of a changeling from Her
Resplendency to His Radiance, the said changeling should take great heart and
good cheer at having introduced into the world some portion of harmony that
cannot but reflect or exhibit itself in what concerns him more nearly.
Now—"

            "Yes, but—"

            "I crave your
grace." He bowed. "Item the third: it is good natural law and
justice, too, that you should be chosen. For by old established custom it is
demanded of those mortals who have commerce with us that they offer the geld or
set out a bowl of milk on St. John's Eve. Now, since your parents failed of
this duty, worshipful babe, when snoring Sneckett yonder came he was clearly
possessed of the right of leaving an imp or changeling in your room."

            "Marry," broke in
the winged fairy, "an' that's not all he was possessed of, to bring such a
great, ugly hulking creature!"

            Scholastic logic, Barber
told himself; if this whole queer business were hallucination, this part just
might be something his mind had dredged out of the subconscious memory left by
college days. There was no use arguing with the old fellow; he'd crawl through
a keyhole. No, that way out wouldn't do. However, there was a test that could
be applied to the reality of the experience. The senses of touch, hearing,
sight could be deceived, but—

            "You needn't rub it
in," said Barber. "I know I'm no beauty. But I am hungry."

            The winged fairy said:
"That's a malady we can mend. Who has the bottle?"

            A milk bottle with a rubber
nipple appeared, and was passed to Butler. He examined it at arm's length for a
moment, grinned, pulled off the nipple, and emptied it in a few large gulps. It
was milk; he could taste it. Hooray! He felt better. The fairies were murmuring
astonishment.

            "Thanks," he said,
"but I'm still hungry. How about some real food?"

            The fairy looked severe.
"Sugar-tits have we none. Is't possible you're schooled to sturdier
meat?"

            "I'll say I am. I'm
schooled to bacon and eggs and coffee for breakfast. How about it?"

            "Coffee? Oh fraudulent
Sneckett! He told us that the folk of your land drank tea."

            "They do. I'm just
peculiar—lots of ways. I prefer coffee." Barber ground the words a trifle,
the suggestion of tea for breakfast capping his annoyance over the constant
references to his babyhood. In the service, where one obtained a senior
consulship only through white hair and the ability to compare digestive
disorders with other old sots, he had been known as "Young" Barber.

            Violanta shrugged and spoke
into the crowd. A gangling sprite with pointed, hairy ears shuffled up with a
tray which contained nothing but a quantity of rose petals.

            "What the devil!"
exclaimed Barber.

            "Your eggs and coffee,
sweet babe—or since it's a mortal child, would I say Snookums?"

            "Not if you value your
health, you wouldn't. And this stuff may look like food to you, but to me it's just
posies. I might go for it if I were a rabbit."

            "Stretch forth your
hand."

            He did so; the rose petals
turned into a substantial breakfast complete with silver in a recognizable
Community pattern. He picked up the coffee cup, sniffed, and peered at it
suspiciously. It seemed all right. He squatted on the ground with the tray on
his lap and tasted. The result made him gag; it was exactly the rose-flavored
coffee served in Hindu restaurants, and a thrill of fear shot through him as he
realized this was the perfect pattern of hallucination, the appearance of one
thing and the actuality of another.

            Violanta caught his
expression of dismay. "Your pardon, gracious and most dear
Barber-babe," she said, "if the flavor wants perfection. A knavish
shaping has turned our spells to naught, and all here have lived on flower
leaves since."