The Tides of Avarice (5 page)

Sylvester glanced at the sunset. As he did so, the last thin fiery line of the sun winked out on the horizon. “Past time.”

“But we'll meet again later tonight,” she said.

“We will?”

“Yes. It's your forfeit for having lost the race.”

“But I didn't lose the—”

“Shush. We're going midnight fishing.”

“We are?”

“The river's full of bleaks – bubbling over with them, I'm told – so it's our duty to go and help ourselves to a few as a contribution to feeding our families.”

“It is?”

“It is. I'm very strong on duty, I am.”

“First I ever—”

“Of course, if you'd prefer a girl to go on her own in the cold and lonely dark and maybe fall in and drown, or get attacked by murderers or—”

“I'll go with you,” he said hurriedly, running after her. “Where d'you want to meet?”

“At the stroke of midnight.” Her words came floating back to him. “By the knoll with the rotting dinghy.”

He knew where she meant.

“Okay.” This time she was running as fast as she could, which was a lot faster than Sylvester was able to. She was receding from him rapidly.

“Be there!” she commanded.

Sylvester gave up the chase.

When Sylvester opened the door to the little house he shared with his mother he was greeted by the smells of home: warm lemming and hot supper. The odor did as much as Viola's kisses had to ease the tension that had been building up within him all day. This was the familiar; this was the world he had grown accustomed to. He closed his eyes for a moment, breathing deeply.

His mother's temper, however, was not so calming.

“You're late.”

“I, ah, Mom, I …”

“Where've you been?”

“Out on the cliff.”

“With Viola?”

“Yes.”

“Well, you got one thing right anyway. Come in, wash those filthy paws of yours, and sit down at the table for your meal. It's probably not burnt.”

Sylvester did as he was told, and quickly. His mother, Hortensia, didn't fall prey to foul moods very often, but when she did, like now, it was only a fool who risked getting on her wrong side. He wondered what had happened to upset her. Perhaps she too had been thinking about his father again, about how Jasper left on that day so many years ago and, despite all his promises, never came back. Hortensia could have taken advantage of the law in Foxglove that, once people had been missing for seven years, they could be declared legally dead. She would have been given the status of Jasper's widow, not his wife. If she'd wanted, she could have remarried and Sylvester knew for a fact she'd had a few offers. There had been a few inquiries as to whether she might be interested in setting up home with another, but she'd chosen not to, believing that Jasper must still be alive out there somewhere, must still be depending upon her …

She slapped a bowl of something brown, steaming and unidentifiable down on the table in front of him.

“Eat.”

He did, even though the food scalded the roof of his mouth. It was a little burnt, as she'd indicated it might be, but that wasn't its real problem. Its real problem was that his mother had been the one to cook it. Hortensia was still a comely female, hence the tentative offers of marriage. If her suitors had ever been unlucky enough to sample her cooking they might have thought twice.

“Anything happen today, Mom?” he said after a while.

Sitting opposite him and eating her own supper, though rather more slowly, she made no reply for a few moments, long enough for Sylvester to assume she really was in a bad mood this time and was going to ignore him.

Then at last she did answer. “This and that.”

“A good this and that, or a bad this and that?”

“Promise me one thing, Sylvester.” She raised her gaze from her bowl and stared straight at him. He noticed for the first time the tears in her eyes. “Promise me that, whatever happens, you'll never turn out to be like that fat, stupid, pompous, filthy-minded, self-serving boor.”

It wasn't the first time they'd had a conversation like this, and probably wouldn't be the last. Hortensia couldn't bring herself even to say the person's name, but Sylvester knew who she meant. There were several lemmings in Foxglove who could be accurately described as fat, stupid, pompous, filthy-minded, self-serving and boorish, but there was only one who regularly drew the venom of his mother, and with such intensity.

Hairbell.

Hairbell had been Foxglove's mayor for the last three years, and he reveled in the power and what he envisioned as the glory. No one in Foxglove could understand how he'd come to be elected to the position, because it was impossible to find anybody who'd admit to voting for him, but elected he'd seemingly been. Hairbell had the appearance and general physical characteristics of a fat, juicy slug, Sylvester always felt. Being not especially handsome himself, except in his mother's eyes, he might have had sympathies were it not for the fact that Hairbell's personality matched his outward appearance. Foxglove's mayor was slimy, slithery poison. Like almost everybody else in the town, Sylvester avoided him as much as he possibly could.

As did his mother, normally. She was a kind soul, and for a long time had done her best to be friendly to the mayor to make up for the obvious loathing the general public felt for him, but then had come the day, a few months ago, when he'd proposed marriage to her. In this case, “proposed marriage” was a euphemism for what Sylvester understood to have been an unusually frank and physical proposition. Hortensia's knuckles had been in bandages for a week; Hairbell's jaw still didn't seem to fit properly into the rest of his face.

“What about him, Mom?”

“He's going to announce another Exodus. Next week, or the week after, he'll be making the proclamation, but I heard about it tonight from Cissy Fairbeetle, who had it direct from the lips of Dimity Scoby, whose brother used to work for—”

“Maybe it's just one of those crazy rumors, Mom?”

She shook her head sadly, letting her gaze fall once more to the half-finished bowl of food in front of her. Impulsively she pushed the plate away. “I don't think so.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Something the oaf said when …”

“When what?”

“When he …”

“When he asked you to marry him?”

Sylvester's mother flushed, and he could see why so many of the males around Foxglove were so keen on her. One of the other junior archivists at the library had once let slip to Sylvester, after they'd both had a bit too much birthday beer, that Hortensia was regarded by everyone there as the hottest mom in town.

“When I'd told him I wouldn't,” she said quietly. Sylvester guessed there was a long story behind those words, a story he was probably never going to hear, at least certainly not tonight. “He was yelling at me, threatening all kinds of things. One of the things he threatened was …”

She gripped the edge of the table tightly with both front paws. Her mouth was moving but no words were coming out.

Sylvester, food forgotten, leaned across the table towards her intently. Mom was a very private person. She kept far too many things to herself. He sensed this was one of those rare occasions when she would open up to him a little, raise the curtain.

“What did he threaten, Mom?”

“He'd got it into his head,” and Sylvester had to strain to hear her now, “that the only reason I was saying no to him was because of you.”

“That's idiotic! You know I'd never stand between you and happiness, Mom.”

Even as Sylvester said the words he knew his feelings were a lot more complicated than that. If Mom took another lemming for her husband, it wouldn't be just her who'd be having to say that Dad was lost forever, that he was dead. Sylvester himself would have to make that admission too. If he had to he would – he was sure he'd be able to – but it'd be like swallowing a whole bucket of sharp stones.

“Of course it was stupid,” Mom was saying, “but that's what he thought. I told him over and over that Jasper's still alive and I'm still Jasper's wife, that even if I wanted to I couldn't marry someone else, but he just wasn't listening. You know how dimwitted and stubborn males can be.”

Sylvester let that one slide.

“Then he said … he said …”

She put her face in her paws.

“What did the scoundrel say?”

Her voice squeaked out in dribs and drabs between her claws. “He said there was a way of getting rid of you. As Mayor of Foxglove, it's Hairbell's role to administrate the lottery for those who go on the Exodus. He said it'd be easy enough for him to arrange things such that your name appeared on the next list.”

“But there's not another Exodus due for … for …”

Sylvester's words ground to a halt as the implications sank in. One of Hairbell's other duties was to schedule when the Exodus should be. If he called one a few years early there'd be a lot of grumbling but no one would seriously dispute the decision, or Hairbell's right to make it.

“You think he's really going to do it?”

Dropping her paws into her lap, Hortensia nodded mutely.

“Well, if he tries it, I just won't go.”

Despite his defiant words, Sylvester felt a rising pulse of excitement. If he went on an Exodus maybe he could find his father, somewhere in the Land of Destiny.

But he didn't say any of that. Not with the way he knew his mother felt about losing someone else she loved. Besides, this talk about Hairbell announcing another Exodus was probably all just gossip anyway.

As he rose from the table his mother put her paw on his arm. “Don't do anything foolish, darling.”

He smiled down at her. “Don't worry, Mom. I won't. Let's get the dishes done. You look like you could do with an early night.”

✳ ✳ ✳ 

Much later, after Sylvester had told Viola about his conversation with his mother, they sat in silence on the riverbank, rods in their paws, their feet in the cool water. There was a bright, high moon tonight, and in its silver light they could see the smooth dark surface of the water. The river seemed curiously life-like at night, snaking its way toward the Great Wet Without End like a scaly dragon that had feasted too enthusiastically on the knights and maidens it had encountered during the day.

“You know the thing that's oddest of all?” said Viola, breaking the stillness at last.

“What?”

“I thought it was me that old scumbag had his eyes on.”

“You?”

“Yes. He's certainly had his paws on me often enough, but always with a good excuse. ‘Just let me assist you up the steps, Miss Pickleberry, in case you trip and hurt yourself.' ‘What a pretty dress! Can the fabric really be as smooth and silky as it looks?' You know the kind of thing. He's even been to see my father to ask if Dad has any definite marital plans for me yet.”

“He did?”

“Believe me, he did. The worst of it is Dad didn't just sock him one right in the eye. 'S far as Dad's concerned, wedding me off to the Mayor of Foxglove could make for the perfect union. ‘My daughter, the Mayor's wife.' Ugh!”

“You're not serious?”

“About the ‘ugh'? I assure you, I've never been so serious about simulated vomiting in all my life. I could probably do the real thing, if you'd like me to try.”

“No, er, not that. Serious about your dad, I mean.”

“Yes. That's what he thought. He was going around with his head in the clouds, imagining everyone being all respectful to him for once, until Mom had a word with him.”

“What happened then?”

“He didn't speak very much for the next week or two. Just went pale every time she opened the knife drawer in the kitchen.”

Sylvester chuckled.

“It didn't matter, anyway.”

“Well, it could have ma—”

“No, it couldn't. Dad's not the one who's going to decide who I marry. Nor will Mom. I'm going to do the choosing myself.”

“Good.”

“I don't care if he does disinherit me.”

Sylvester thought worriedly about the diminutive size of a Junior Archivist's salary, even a Junior Archivist who was also a fully qualified Translator of Ancient Tongues – but he was getting way ahead of himself. What in the world gave him the idea the prettiest girl in Foxglove might choose to marry him? Oh, he was all right for occasional kissing and cuddling, that was what old friends were for, after all, but marriage was serious business and—

“I suppose I'll probably end up marrying you,” said Viola ruminatively.

“Huh?”

“Well, you're handy and you're, what's the word I'm looking for? Steadfast. That's it. Steadfast. Loyal to a fault, and steadfast.”

Sylvester wasn't sure he liked this character description.

Viola carried on. “You've got a nice respectable job, which is something any sensible girl ought to be thinking about, and …”

Dropping her fishing rod into the river, she collapsed in a fit of giggles.

“Oh, Sylvester, you should see the look on your face.”

Splashing his paw in the water to retrieve her rod, he said nothing. She must know how he felt about her. How cruel of her to tease his affections so heartlessly.

“If I thought for one moment,” she said, helping him resume his position on the riverbank, “that I was good enough for you and that you'd want to marry an airhead like me, I'd be tripping over myself to grab you before you escaped.”

“You're not an airhead,” was all Sylvester could think of to say, confused by the sudden turnabout in his assumptions.

“Tell that to the air in my head,” she replied cheerfully, casting her line. “I'm as pretty as they make 'em, I'll not put on false modesty about that, but I'm flighty and shallow, and people get bored of me quick when they stop noticing my prettiness. It's a fact of life. I've learned to live with it. It doesn't bother me.”

“Oh, Viola.”

“Lovely night, isn't it? In the unlikely event that I catch any fish, I'm going to smoke 'em.”

“I don't think that about you at all.”

She turned her face instantly towards him, the moonlight picking out the exquisite line of her mouth and making her alert little eyes glitter. “You don't?”

“No, of course I don't.”

“You're just saying that.”

“I'm not. Well, I am saying it, of course, but I'm not just saying it. I really mean it. You're . . .” he was lost for words again. “You're everything.”

“Charmer.”

“Yeah right, Sylvester Lemmington, the charmer. I can just see them putting that on my tombstone: ‘Lovingly Remembered For His Ability to Charm the Pants Off—' oops, er, I didn't mean it like that.”

She fluttered her eyelashes in the way that always drove him crazy. “Doesn't sound such a bad idea to me.”

Sylvester didn't know where to look, so he looked out over the smoothly rolling sheet that was the river's surface.