Макс Фрай - The Stranger

We wandered through the house; our journey seemed to have no end. Sometimes I was beset by the thirst for blood, but I was too preoccupied by warding off the attacks of the frenzied household items hunting us down. More than anything else, I was insulted by the attack of a thick volume of the Chronicles of Uguland.

“Hey! I read you, you jerk!” I shouted indignantly, fending off the assault of the savage fount of knowledge with a weighty cane with which I had sensibly armed myself at the start of our campaign. Sir Juffin put a stop to this scene, as well.

In one of the rooms I saw my own reflection in a mirror and shuddered. Where had those burning eyes and sunken cheeks come from? When had I become so emaciated and haggard? I had eaten not so very long ago! Actually, from Count Dracula’s point of view, I had never eaten anything worthwhile. Ugh! How disgusting! But it wasn’t too difficult to keep myself in check. A person grows used to everything. We’ll leave it at that.

We roamed through the house. It seemed that was the way it would always be from now on: time had stopped, we had died, and ended up in our individual, honestly earned purgatory. In one of the rooms, we came upon Sir Makluk himself. He was occupied with domestic duties: he was industriously rolling up an enormous bookcase, with all the books inside it. The most amazing thing was that he was already halfway finished. The old man turned to us and asked amiably how we were doing. “Soon everything will be well,” Juffin promised, and Sir Makluk froze in the middle of his monstrous labors. Yet another statue in this newly established wax museum. A youth in gray was shuffling around on the threshold, quietly snarling and clapping his hands rhythmically. In a moment, he froze, too.

Then we walked through the empty corridor, and it seemed to me that I was lagging behind ourselves, because for a fraction of a second I observed the backs of two heads. One belonged to Sir Juffin, and the other was my own.

“Are you tired, Sir Max?” Juffin asked with a smile.

“Let’s get out of here,” I replied mechanically.

“Sure. What is there left for us to do here? Get ready. Soon you’ll be fine.”

“I already feel pretty normal. Everything has passed, except for the nausea.”

“That’s just hunger. A couple bucketfuls of my blood and it will disappear like magic!”

“Very funny.”

“If I didn’t laugh I’d retch at the sight of you. Have you looked in the mirror?”

“You think you looked any better when you hissed at the monster in the bedchamber?”

“Yes, I can only imagine. Onward, Max! We both truly deserve a breather.”

We went out into the garden. It was already getting dark. The bright round orb of the moon lit up Juffin’s weary face; his light eyes shone yellow. The yellow light enveloped me, and I thought stupidly, surprised: Why do people need eyes! Aren’t lanterns enough for them? That was my last thought. To be honest, I could have gotten along without that one, too . . .

Then I looked at my wounded hand, and blacked out.

Do you think I came to a week later in a soft bed, holding the hand of a pretty nurse? Think again! You still don’t understand what it means to work for Sir Juffin Hully. Do you think he’d let me lie around unconscious? Not he!

They brought me around immediately; true, in a very pleasant way. I found myself slumped against a tree with my mouth full of some amazing potion. Kimpa was kneeling at my side with a cup, which I reached out for eagerly. Another gulp of the reviving liquid was administered to me.

“Yum!” I said. And then demanded, “More!”

“That’s enough!” Juffin insisted. “I’m not stingy, but Elixir of Kaxar is the strongest tonic known to our science. Black Magic of the Eighth Degree! But I didn’t tell you that.”

“And who could I possibly tell? You, I suppose.”

“You never know . . . Well, still hankering after a little blood?”

I listened attentively to my body’s voice. It wasn’t calling out for blood. Then I turned my attention to the other aspects of my existence. Hm, newly acquired wisdom also nowhere in evidence. Although . . .

“Looks like there’s still something left from all that happened—though not like back there, of course.”

Juffin nodded.

“That shake-up did you good, Max. You never know what’s coming. Boy, what a day it was! But all joking aside, Melifaro is in deep trouble.”

“Those pathological specimens back at the fountain are in it even deeper.”

Sir Juffin waved his hand indifferently.

“It’s too late for them already. Helping the others will be as easy as one-two-three. But Melifaro, poor lad, has only a small chance. Let’s go home, Sir Max. We’ll feast, mourn, and think.”

At home, the first thing we did was to consume everything in sight in the kitchen. This revived me even more. The process of meditative mastication stimulates mental activity. My own, at least.

Just before dessert a belated ray of enlightenment visited me. I sat suddenly upright in the armchair, swallowed a piece of something that went down the wrong way, started coughing, and reached for a glass of water. To top off all the other misfortunes and mishaps of the day, I mistook a jug of the strongest Jubatic firewater for regular water, and chugged it down in one burning swig.

Juffin observed me with the interest of a research scientist.

“Whence this sudden passion for alcohol? What’s gotten into you?”

“I’m an idiot,” I admitted despondently.

Juffin rushed to console me. “Naturally, but don’t be so hard on yourself. You have plenty of other abilities.”

“I completely forgot about our witness! The little box! I had planned to chat with it at my leisure, but—”

Sir Juffin’s face underwent a sudden change.

“I also have plenty of other abilities. And now is just the time to think about them. An inexcusable blunder! You had every right to forget about the box—but me! I always suspected that the dimwittedness of Boboota Box was contagious. All the symptoms are there—I’m terribly sick. Go get your treasure and bring it here, Max. Let’s see what it can tell us.”

I went to my room. One of my slippers was lying on top of my pillow. On top of it, Chuff was dozing peacefully. I gingerly touched his shaggy ruff. Chuff smacked his lips, but didn’t wake up. And he was right not to—this was no time for waking up.

I found the little box at the bottom of one of the drawers, and tip-toed back out. My hands trembled slightly, for some reason. I felt a foreboding in my heart. What if it didn’t want to talk this time, either? Never mind, Juffin would think of something. He would shake the soul loose from it. I wonder what the soul of a box looks like? I cleared my throat, and the heavy feeling in my chest began to dissipate.

The dessert that goodhearted Kimpa decided to regale the exhausted heroes with exceeded my wildest expectations. This meant that the interrogation of the box was postponed for another quarter of an hour.

Finally, Sir Juffin made his way into the study. I followed behind, squeezing the smooth body of our singular and precious witness in my cold, moist hands. No denying, I was nervous. Something told me the little box was ready to talk to us, and this unnerved me all the more. I had always been fond of horror films, but now I would have been glad to watch The Muppet Show. Just for the sake of variety.

This time, the preparations for communicating with the box were far more elaborate than before. Sir Juffin rummaged around for a long time in the drawer where he kept the candles. Finally, he chose one, bluish-white, with an intricate design formed by tiny dark-red smatterings of wax. For five minutes or so he tried to start a fire using some kind of awkward flint stone, the workings of which I couldn’t fathom. At long last his efforts met with success. Placing the candle by the far wall, Juffin lay on his stomach in the opposite corner and gestured to me to join him. This I did. The floor in the study was bare and cold; there were no rugs. I thought: perhaps these inconvenient little rituals qualify as a kind of bribe to the “powers of the unknown.” Are the “powers of the unknown” really so petty?