Генри Берд - Bored of the rings

“That’s pretty stout talk,” laughed Fatlip, wagging his right foreleg, “about a body what’s only borrowed the name of Bugger!”

“Aye,” chimed Clotty Peristalt. “If that Frito weren’t the seed of a crossbow wedding, then I don’t know lunch from din-din!” The roisterers all laughed aloud as they remembered Frito’s mother, Dildo’s sister, who rashly plighted her troth to someone from the wrong side of the Gallowine (someone known to be a hafling, i.e. part boggie, part opossum). Several of the members took this up and there followed a series of coarse [3] Coarse to anyone except a boggie, of course. and rather simpleminded jests at the expense of the Buggers.

“What’s more,” said Fatlip, “Dildo’s always acting... mysterious, if you know what I mean.”

“There are those that say he acts like he’s got something to hide, they say,” came a strange voice from the corner shadows. The voice belonged to a man, a stranger to the boggies of the Bag Eye, a stranger they had understandably overlooked because of his rather ordinary black cape, black chain mail, black mace, black dirk, and perfectly normal red glowing fires where his eyes should have been.

“Them what say that may be right,” agreed Fatlip, winking at his cronies to tell them a punchline was coming. “But them that say such may be wrong, too.” After the general hilarity resulting from the typical Gangree gaff died down, few had noticed that the stranger had disappeared, leaving only a strange, barnyard odor behind him.

“But,” insisted little Spam, “it will be a good party!”

To this they all agreed, for there was nothing a boggie loved more than an opportunity to stuff himself until he was violently ill.

The season was cool, early autumn, heralding the annual change in the boggie dessert from whole watermelons to whole pumpkins. But the younger boggies who were not yet too obese to trundle their hulkish selves through the thoroughfares of the town saw evidence of a future treat at the forthcoming celebration: fireworks!

As the day of the party drew nearer, carts drawn by sturdy plow-goats rolled through the bullrush gates of Boggietown, laden with boxes and crates, each bearing the X-rune of Goodgulf the Wizard and various elvish brand names.

The crates were unloaded and opened at Dildo’s door, and the mewling boggies wagged their vestigial tails with wonder at the marvelous contents. There were clusters of tubes mounted on tripods to shoot rather outsized roman candles; fat, finned skyrockets, with odd little buttons at the front end, weighing hundreds of pounds; a revolving cylinder of tubes with a crank to turn them; and large “cherry bombs” that looked to the children more like little green pineapples with a ring inserted at the top. Each crate was labeled with an olive-drab elf-rune signifying that these toys had been made in the elf-shops of a fairy whose name was something very much like “Amy Surplus.”

Dildo watched the unpacking with a broad grin and sent the young ones scampering with a vicious swipe of a well-honed toenail. “G’wan, beat it, scram!” he called merrily after them as they disappeared. He then laughed and turned back to his boggie-hole, to talk to his guest within.

“This’ll be one fireworks display they won’t forget,” cackled the ageing boggie to Goodgulf, who was puffing his cigar rather uncomfortably in a chair of tasteless elvish-modern. The floor around it was littered with four-letter Scrabble arrangements.

“I am afraid that you must alter your plans for them,” said the Wizard, unsnaggling a clot of tangled hair in his long, dirtygray beard. “You cannot use extermination as a method for settling your petty grudges with the townspeople.”

Dildo studied his old friend with shrewd appraisal. The old Wizard was robed in a threadbare magician’s cloak long out of fashion, with a few spangles and sequins hanging precariously at the ragged hems. On his head was a tall, battered conical hat sloppily covered with glow-in-the-dark cabalistic signs, alchemical symbols, and some off-color dwarfish graffiti, and in his gnarled, nail-bitten hands was a bent length of silvered maggotwood that served doubly as a “magic” wand and backscratcher. At this moment Goodgulf was using it in its second office as he studied the worn toes of what in these days would be taken for black basketball sneakers. Hightops.

“Looking a little down-at-the-heels, Gulfie,” chuckled Dildo. “Slump in the old Wizard racket, eh?”

Goodgulf looked pained at the use of his old school nickname, but adjusted his robes with dignity. “It is no fault of mine that unbelievers ridicule my powers,” he said. “My wonders will yet again make all gape and quail!” Suddenly he made a pass with his scratcher and the room was plunged into darkness. Through the blackness Dildo saw that Goodgulf’s robes had become radiant and bright. Odd letters appeared mysteriously on the front of his robe, reading in elvish, Will Thee Kiss Me in the Dark, Baby?

Just as suddenly the light returned to the comfortable burrow, and the inscription faded from the conjurer’s breast. Dildo rolled his eyes upward in his head and shrugged.

“Really now, Gulfie,” said Dildo, “that kind of stuff went out with high-button greaves. No wonder you’ve got to moonlight card-sharking at hick carny shows.”

Goodgulf was unperturbed by his friend’s sarcasm. “Do not mock powers beyond your knowledge, impudent hairfoot,” he said, as five aces materialized in his hand, “for you see the efficacy of my enchantments!”

“All I see is that you’ve finally got the hang of that silly sleeve-spring,” chuckled the boggie as he poured a bowl of ale for his old companion. “So why don’t you leave off with your white-mice-and-pixie-dust routine and tell me why you’ve honored me with your presence? And appetite.”

The Wizard paused a moment before speaking to focus his eyes, which had recently developed a tendency to cross, and looked gravely at Dildo.

“It is time to talk of the Ring,” he said.

“Ring, ring? What ring?” said Dildo.

“Thee knows only too well what Ring,” said Goodgulf. “The Ring in thy pocket, Master Bugger.”

“Oooooh, that Ring,” said Dildo with a show of innocence, “I thought you meant the ring you leave in my tub after your seances with your rubber duck.”

“This is not the time for the making of jests,” said Goodgulf, “for Evil Ones are afoot in the lands, and danger is abroad.”

“But—” began Dildo.

“Strange things are stirring in the East...”

“But—”

“Doom is walking the High Road...”

“But—”

“There is a dog in the manger...”

“But—”

“...a fly in the ointment...”

Dildo clapped his paw frantically over the working mouth of the Wizard. “You mean... you mean,” he whispered, “ there’s a Balrog in the woodpile? ”

“Mmummffleflug!” affirmed the gagged magician.

Dildo’s worst fears had come to pass. After the party, he thought, there would be much to be decided.

Although only two hundred invitations had been sent, Frito Bugger should not have been surprised to see several times that number sitting at the huge troughlike tables under the great pavilion in the Bugger meadows. His young eyes widened as he moped about observing legions of ravenous muzzles tearing and snatching at their roasts and joints, oblivious to all else. Few faces were familiar to him in the grunting, belching press that lined the gorging-tables, but fewer still were not already completely disguised in masks of dried gravy and meat sauce. It was only then that the young boggie realized the truth in Dildo’s favorite adage, “It takes a heap o’ vittles to gag a boggie.”