The Curse of the Giant Hogweed (2 page)

Great balls of fire, where was Peter Shandy? Gradually, without his knowing when or how, Peter’s feet had moved from ancient oak planking to forest floor. This had never, not possibly, been anything other than forest floor. The trees around him had roots as big around as beer kegs, knotted into the earth like giant hawsers, as they needs must be to hold upright the incredible trunks growing from them.

There was a simple explanation for this phenomenon, Peter thought. He was drunk. No, that wouldn’t work. He still hadn’t laid eyes on the bartender, let alone got his pint. He’d fallen asleep, that was it. He’d succumbed to jet lag and the backlash from Professor Pfylltrydd’s learned discourse. Or maybe he’d hypnotized himself staring at those shiny pump handles.

No matter. Tim and Dan would come along and rouse him as soon as they’d finished whatever was taking them so long back there. In the meantime, he might as well relax and enjoy his nap.

It felt strange to know he was asleep, yet not feel the least bit sleepy. But then one usually didn’t, in a dream. One didn’t always have such powerful tactile sensations, either. Peter slapped at a gnat that was lunching on his cheekbone, and made blasphemous utterance as he banged his toe on one of those mammoth tree roots.

It was odd that his toe hurt from the banging, come to think of it. He’d put on his heavy work boots when they’d got into the Fiat. Peter looked down at his feet and saw he was wearing primitive buskins made of roughly shaped leather drawn up over his feet like the dough around an apple in a dumpling. Thongs were laced across the tops and around his ankles to keep them on.

Well, such things happened in dreams. He ought to be grateful he was having this relatively innocuous excursion around the fringes of the subconscious instead of the recurring nightmare in which he’d find himself lecturing to a crowded classroom, stark naked except for a giant hogweed stuck Hawaiian-style behind his right ear. Or was it the left ear? One side meant, “Come to me, beloved,” the other meant, “Sorry, my wife won’t let me,” but he couldn’t remember which was which.

That came from his having been driving on the wrong side of the road all afternoon, he supposed. It wouldn’t have mattered in this particular dream, anyway. He’d been more concerned about such niceties back in the pre-Helen period when he’d got more deeply involved with a biologist from Amherst than he’d meant to. Christabel, her name was.

How in Sam Hill had Christabel snuck into his dream, anyhow? Drat it, the Randy Shandy of yore was a respectably married man now. Peter wished Helen would manifest herself instead. He liked dreaming about Helen. He couldn’t think of much about Helen that he didn’t like, except that he was here and she was—where? In some quaint olde worlde teashop by now, scoffing up scones with Iduna, while he was being led up the forest path by an overexcited id. Why the flaming perdition didn’t Tim and Dan come along and wake him up?

Maybe they’d decided he needed his rest, and left him to slumber among the beer pumps while they quaffed their restoratives. No, they wouldn’t have allowed him to remain draped over the bar for some wandering professor to see and to deride. They’d have dragged him over and laid him down on one those oaken benches so picturesquely hollowed by so many generations of bucolic buttocks.

His wisest course might therefore be to select a likely root and lie down upon it, perhaps conjuring up a few robins to cover him with leaves for added comfort. Then he could dream himself to sleep so that he could wake up on all levels of consciousness at once, and get the show back on the road.

Why couldn’t he have simply dreamed himself out into that fine stand of hogweed? He could have got in a spot of preliminary investigation and saved himself some time. Peter could see no hogweed around here, wherever here might be. Too shady, no doubt. It was going to be a howling shame to cut down such noble trees as these. They’d have to go sometime, though, so the land could be cleared for farming. He hoped he’d wake up before that happened.

Peter was getting concerned about his companions. Dan Stott, to be sure, had
festina lente
engraven on his backbone, but Tim was brisk enough. Unless his mind wandered to trace elements. Cripes, if Dan had got to ruminating and Tim to pondering the subtler nuances of boron in the beet fields again, he could be stuck in this imaginary forest till the cows came home.

Assuming there were any cows to come. So far, Peter had seen no sign of life except that one gnat, which he’d swatted out of whatever existence it might have been supposed to possess. He was getting lonesome. Maybe that dream about the roomful of snickering students would have been preferable, after all. Why didn’t something happen?

H
IS GRANDMOTHER HAD ALWAYS
said it wasn’t safe to wish for anything because if you did, you might get it. Shandy was kicking petulantly at a root, bemoaning like Arthur Guiterman’s cam-u-el his too-distinguished onliness, when he got poked in the chest by a harp.

“What the hell?” was his natural reaction.

“Oh, sorry.” Above the twanging of agitated harp strings, the apology came loud and clear. “Force of habit.”

The speaker was, as perhaps Peter might have expected, a giant. A mere stripling among giants, to be sure: probably not more than seven feet in height and a paltry yard or so across the shoulders. Still, this was an impressive enough giant to dream up on one’s first try. Peter Shandy would not have wanted a larger giant. He wasn’t at all sure he wanted this one.

However, the giant’s not uncomely countenance looked amiable enough, not to say contrite. “ ’Tis this goddamn enchantment I be under,” he was explaining. “I haven’t got used to traveling without my lance. I mean, ye meet a wizard, it’s ye customary etiquette of ye geste to ram ye old lance tip up against his tabard and make him confess what he hath been up to. Ye blasted wizards be always up to something.”

He straightened the wreath of giant hogweed that had slid cockeyed on his flowing golden locks, hitched up the skirt of his white robe to scratch a thigh the size of an oak bole, and sighed. “I forget what ye protocol be for a bard in a situation like this. Ye wouldn’t happen to recall, I misdoubt me?”

“Sorry,” Shandy answered. “I’m a—er—stranger here, myself. Do I gather you are in fact a knight errant who’s been turned by some form of necromancy into a traveling poet?”

“Urrgh,” said the giant. “I hight Torchyld y Dewr. Highted, I mean, until this morning. I wot not what I hight now. Torchyld yr Anobeithiol, perchance.”

“Too bad,” Shandy replied, knowing somehow that the former meant The Intrepid and the latter meant The Hopeless. “Not about the Torchyld part, I mean. Torchyld’s a first-rate name. I know somebody with a name very much like it. As a matter of fact, you remind me—”

“Arrgh!” the giant interrupted. “Never mind that. Ye be supposed to tell me how ye hight. I remember that much anyway.”

“So I am. Well, I—er—hight Peter Shandy. Actually I’m not a wizard. I’m a professor.”

“A what?”

“A—er—teacher.”

“Oh, a druid. Why saidst ye not so in ye first place? Dost ken any poetry?”

“Quite a lot, as a matter of fact. Have you heard the one about the young lady of Niger who smiled as she rode on a tiger?”

Torchyld clearly had not. Nor, as Shandy realized a few syllables too late, would he be likely to know the meaning of either Niger or tiger. The sample had been ill-chosen. But why did the giant have to cry about it? For crying, Torchyld incredibly was.

“Dash it all,” snapped Shandy, “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. Here, take my handkerchief and blow your nose, like a good chap.”

It was then that he became aware he no longer possessed a handkerchief, nor a pocket to carry one in. Like the enchanted warrior blubbering before him, he was wearing a longish robe of what might in a romance be described as fairest white linen. To Peter it looked coarsely woven, badly wrinkled, and none too clean.

As for the handkerchief, Torchyld wouldn’t have known that word either, and didn’t appear to be interested. He merely sniffed a mighty sniffle and ignored the tears on his cheeks, this being evidently some kind of Golden Age when a man didn’t have to go around acting manly if he didn’t happen to feel like it.

“I weep for ye Lady Syglinde,” he explained with simple dignity. “Ye being a druid and therefore possessed of unbounded wisdom, I perceive a kindly spirit hath set me in thy way, that I may unto thee my woeful tale unfold. Prithee haul up a root and ease thy feet. This may take a while.”

“I’m in no hurry,” said Peter, draping his laundry more snugly about him and settling into the shade of a giant oak. Tim and Dan must be just about getting to work on their second pints by now, so he might as well nap a while longer. This dream was beginning to liven up.

“Okay, shoot. That is—er—unfold thy tale. What happened to Lady Syglinde? Did she get enchanted, too?”

“My Syglinde be herself an enchantment,” Torchyld groaned. “Forsooth, had it not been for that old hag Dwydd, we should e’en now be wending our way to the battlements, thereon to plight our troth. Syglinde and I spend quite a lot of time plighting our troth,” he admitted with what might in a less awesome figure have been described as a boyish grin. “At least we did, until Ffyffnyr disappeared.”

“You did say Ffyffnyr?”

“In sooth,” Torchyld replied in some surprise. “So did ye also. Why not? That be his hight.”

“Yes, but who is he?”

“Meseemed ye druids be supposed to wot this stuff. He be my great-uncle Sfyn’s pet griffin.”

“Drat it, you can’t expect me to remember the name of every griffin that comes flapping along,” said Peter testily. “We druids have far weightier matters to occupy our minds. What’s so special about Ffyffnyr?”

“He be not a bad old scout, as griffins go. Great-uncle Sfyn hath him trained to roll over and play enchanted, sit up and beg for boiled eels, give ye his talon, all kinds of cute tricks. And when ye throne room groweth too cold, Ffyff can always breathe fire and warm ye place up.”

“M’yes, I see. A comforting sort of beast to have around, no doubt. You spoke of a throne room. Your great-uncle would then be King Sfyn?”

“Aye, so he be. And I be his great-nephew and Syglinde his ward. She and I had it all fixed up we were going to get wedlocked and build ourselves a cozy little castle with our own portcullis, and settle down to raising eels in ye moat and
digrifwvch
in ye royal chamber.”

Shandy didn’t have much trouble figuring out
digrifwvch,
either. “Your own castle, eh? Then you’re not in line to inherit your great-uncle’s kingdom?”

“Nay, druid, I be only—let’s see.” Torchyld tried counting on his fingers, but gave it up as a bad job after two. “To begin with, there be his sons, Prince Edmyr, Prince Edwy, and Prince Edbert. My father was King Sfyn’s nephew Lord Edolph, but
taddi
got eaten by a garefowl one day when he was out hunting sea monsters. Or perchance it was ye other way around. My mother was never clear as to ye details. She wasted away.”

“I’m sorry to hear it.”

“Gramercy, druid. Where was I? Oh yes. After my uncles there be Uncle Edmyr’s son Dagobert. He be ye crown prince now. His brother Dilwyn used to be, but Dilwyn perished at ye last new moon of a surfeit and bloody flux. Then there be Edwy’s son Owain, and Edbert’s sons Gelert and Gaheris. Those be all my cousins. Ye legitimate ones, anyway. The rest count not. There be female cousins, too, but they also count not in terms of ye succession. My aunts be always nagging me to marry one of ye girls now that I be rich and famous.”

“Are you, forsooth?”

“Forsooth, verily. Wist ye not? I be he that slew ye wyvern. See ye, this wyvern gan laying waste ye countryside, kidnapping fair maidens and whatnot. Eftsoons ye wyvern gan carrying off sheep, too. So then something had to be done. So I did. So I made claim to ye wyvern’s hoard.”

Shandy had been under the impression it was dragons that had hoards, but perhaps a wyvern counted as a kind of dragon. He thought he would not raise the question. No doubt druids were supposed to know all about wyverns, too.

“Ah, yes,” he said briskly. “Speaking of wyverns, let’s get back to Ffyffnyr.”

“Ffyffnyr be a griffin.”

“So you’ve already informed me. The difference being that a wyvern has only two front legs, the hinder part of its body being serpentine in form. A griffin is just an ordinary, run-of-the-mill quadrupedal cross between a lion and an eagle. With wings, needless to say. Both are members of the genus
Bestialis mythicus.
”

“I wot not of learned tongues,” Torchyld answered rather sulkily. “Hast ever slain a wyvern with a disenchanted sword and two stale biscuits, druid?”

“No, I can’t say I have,” Shandy admitted. “Nor should I care to try. That must have been a feat unparalleled for valor, not to mention agility and resourcefulness. You used the biscuits as bait, I assume?”

“Nay,” quoth Torchyld. “I but stood waiting till he got close and opened his jaws to devour me. Then I chucked ye biscuits down his gullet and rammed them into his windpipe with ye point of my sword. So when he tried to breathe fire at me, he backfired and fried his own gizzard.”

“Good Lord!”

“Well may ye say so,” Torchyld replied with a self-satisfied smirk. “Ye accursed sword was otherwise useless. I had essayed to hew him in twain with one blow as is my wont, but ye damned blade wouldn’t even cut through ye first layer of scales. Baleful Dwydd had cast an evil spell on it and had not e’en shown ye courtesy to taunt me with her perfidy as I was setting off on my geste. She but handed me ye biscuits with a fiendish leer, and went flapping off to her turret.”

“This—er—Dwydd lives right in King Sfyn’s castle?”

“Aye, verily. Ye can’t have a castle without a wicked hag roosting in one turret or another, ecod. It be not ye done thing. Syglinde and I had been wondering where we could find one for our own love nest. ’Tis a job to tax a wizard, tracking down a really rotten beldame these days, I tell ye. Most hags be but mean-tempered because the damp getteth into their aged bones and they lack a pet griffin to keep them warm. Syggie said perchance we might take in some poor soul who needeth a home and make believe she be evil. What difference? All this keeping up with ye Penjoneses can be carried too far, meseems.”