Gwen smiled uneasily at me, Penrose and the thirteen Rat conga line we had met outside the Woak grove. I sensed that she wasn’t quite done asking questions after all because she turned to Fenwick with a puzzled expression on her face, but she failed to ask him anything because she saw that he had somehow switched out of his Oktoberfest costume and had dressed as the King, circa 1956, in the five seconds or so since she had last looked at him.
“Today is Elvis’ Birthday,” he said, as though it explained everything.
“But I thought it was Oktoberfest?” Gwen glared at John, then smiled. “You do plan on being of some use soon, darling?”
John spoke. His voice had a slight echoing quality, like the sound effect used in the original Star Trek to make a voice sound mighty. “It seems that the Springs is somewhat mercurial.”
“What does that mean, precisely? As in hot and cold? As in Freddy?”
John ignored the sarcasm. “Depends when his birthday falls.”
Gwen laughed and pulled a “handful” of John’s shoulder out like silly putty and let go and watched it snap back into place. “Tell me lover, do all your parts react like that?”
I, the wearer of the straw hat, took control of the narrative (I happened to be carrying a box, if I forgot to mention it earlier). “Now you’ve done it,” I said. “You are going to be scolded by our censor.”
The holder of the censor job varies from day to day. That way nobody gets hated anymore than anyone else. It turned out that Penrose held the title that day (which was awfully convenient). S/he pulled a clipboard out of the ether and got scoldy with Gwen. “You cannot infer sex-stuff in the Springs. You must say it. We do not approve of coy. Naughty-naughty. Shame on you. This concludes the scolding.”
Gwen looked at me, ”Are you in charge? If so, what is the Flying Stoat talking about?”
“Yes, I am as much in charge as I can be, which ain’t much,” I said. “Anyhoo, in Saragun Springs, you must ask smutty stuff directly,” I said. “For example, you can say ‘Is your dick like this?’–please Mr. Mallory, do not reply. You get scolded by the censor if you get clever about it. We find that forcing the direct approach eliminates that sort of thing altogether.”
“This is a strange place,” said John.
“I’m certain it gets weirder,” Gwen added.
“Depends on your standard of weirder,” I said, opening the box, from which I extracted two Oktoberfest tankards. “I have brought you guys something to drink.”
“How come they didn’t spill?” Gwen or John (really doesn’t matter–one of them asked it).
“Because they contain Faerie Ale, a magic brew, that can be drunk by both the living and the, um, life challenged,” I said, handing a tankard to John.
“This stuff won’t change me into a Toad or anything, will it?” cautious Gwen asked, taking hers.
I just smiled because I had no idea what the stuff might do. Faerie Ale is never harmful, but it occasionally does interesting things.
John, who hadn’t had a drink since his demise in 1978, quaffed his immediately.
Gwen regarded him with a bemused expression underscored (or overscored) with an arched eyebrow (um, her left).
He smiled. “T–riffic,” he said. “Hey, it’s not like it can make me deader.”
Gwen saw that each of us had a tankard of Faerie Ale in our hands/paws/hooves, whatever. Even the the abundant Sheep and Elvis Rats had a tankard. She did not question this, which meant that she was indeed back into the Saragun Springs’ swing of things, and drank. I assumed by his attitude that John was on board instantly, and he had a second Ale–which was good because things do get weirder.
End Part Five
(Happy Birthdays and a toast of Faerie Ale to the memories of Elvis, Steven Hawking, David Bowie and, of course, the legendary Larry Storch)
Saragun Springs 