Peter Beagle - Tamsin

Julian gave a tiny whimper and burrowed against me with his eyes shut tight, like Mister Cat. It took me a couple of tries to make my voice work, but I said, “We don’t have any pigs, and you’re nothing but a dorky boggart, and you can’t turn us into anything,” all in one croaky rush. I don’t know how I got it all out—I was just mad because he was scaring Julian, and enjoying it. Boggart or no boggart, I know that look when I see it.

The boggart’s eyes twinkled. I’ve heard people say that all my life, but until then I’d never seen anyone actually do it. Like a birthday-cake candle flickering far down a tunnel. He said, “Maight be I can, maight be I can’t. Dun’t be in such a fluster to chance en.” He pointed at me with a thick, stubby forefinger. “Mind yerse’n, or what boggart’s doone’s naught to what boggart will do.” And he grinned at me like a horse with a mouthful of gray and black teeth.

“Oh, please,” I said. “Trashing the kitchen every night, breaking down fences, throwing apples at people—that’s about your speed. You’d be hot stuff at Gaynor Junior High.” Julian was starting to get interested: He sat up, still huddling close against me, and gaped at the boggart. The boggart made a face at him—Julian yelped and dived into my lap again—and the boggart laughed.

“Noo, noo, tha’s naught but what boggarts is zet to do on this earth”—only it came out thik yearth —“no harm in it, ner zpite.” He was waving that finger at me, dead serious as Mrs. Wolfe at Gaynor used to get when she thought we weren’t paying enough attention to the Congress of Vienna. “But ye—tak shame to yerself, ye ought, grieving yer ma zo wi’ yer zulks and yer pelts and yer mopen to be off back wheer ye do coom vrom. And her a-worken and a-werreten hersen to plain boone vor to mak thikky farm be home vor ye, be home vor ye all. Tak shame, ye Jenny Glookstein!”

That’s the best I can get it down, and that’s all of that I’m about to do. I’d never heard old-time Dorset talk before, except in little scraps, like when Ellie John says a shriveled-up apple’s all quaddled, or says she doesn’t ho about something, meaning she doesn’t give a damn. Or when William says the weather’s turning lippy, which means it’s going to rain. But nobody talks like Thomas Hardy people, they haven’t for ages. Evan says it’s because of radio and TV and movies. He’ll go on forever about how regional dialects ought to be treated like endangered species before everybody winds up sounding just like everybody else. But that’s what people want , most of them. I knew that in grade school.

Anyway, I was so startled by his coming on like Jimmy Cricket, the voice of my conscience, that I forgot to be scared. I yelled at him, “I don’t believe this. You’re the one who makes my mother’s life hell, and it’s all my fault? Okay, that is chutzpah .” Let him chew on my native dialect, see how he likes it.

The boggart wasn’t fazed a bit. “Noo, I do like yer ma, I do like her fine—she’s a rare goodhussy, for an outlander, and pretty wi’ it. There’s bottom to en.” It took me the longest time to figure out that hussy just means a housewife in Dorset talk, and bottom’s like honor, integrity. “But she’s noo raised her darter right, there’s her zorrow. Proper darter, she’d a-zet hersen first thing to riddle out what in t’world might please a boggart. For us can be pleased, aye, us can be sweetened, na great trickses to it—any ninnyhammer’d a-figgured en out by naow. Any ninnyhammer as cared, that’s to say.” And he gave me that horse grin again.

I was catching on slowly, more to the rhythm than the words. I said, “There’s a way to make you leave us alone? What is it, what do you want? Tell me, I’ll be on it—five minutes, tops. What?”

But the boggart just shook his head. “Ben’t that simple, can’t be. Think , gel, use yer nogger—think like boggart, think like me.” He folded his arms across his chest and stood there, reaching up now and then to play with his little beard, looking more self-satisfied than I’ve ever seen anyone look. Including Mister Cat.

Beside me Julian whispered, “Milk.” The storm was still banging away at the house, rattling the windows until I thought the old frames would come apart, and Julian had to raise his voice. “Milk. Ellie John says her mother always leaves milk out for the—the Good Folk.” He ducked his head back down so fast that I hardly heard the last words.

That got a snort out of the boggart—it sounded like somebody sneezing with a mouthful of hot soup. “ Milk ? Noo, that’s all trot, that is—what’s boggart want wi’ milk? Is boggart a suckling piggy, then? Is boggart calf or lamb, chetten or poppy? Noo, and not Good Folk neither. Try us again, Joolian McHugh.”

Julian couldn’t manage it, but he’d got me thinking about the handful of fairy tales I still remembered in bits and pieces. I said, “Wait, wait a minute—hold it… Shoes ! That’s it—we make you a terrific pair of shoes, and you’re so happy with them that you dance all over the kitchen, and you never come back. That’s it, right? Has to be.” But the boggart was spluttering and stamping his feet before I was half through.

“Shoes, is it naow? Shoes, like them great clumsy hommicks you folk wear, and me wi’ a grand pair of kittyboots of me own?” And he held them up, first one, then the other, to show Julian and me the perfect little sort of cleats on the soles, and the way the soles nestled into the uppers, as though there weren’t any stitches at all. They were old, like him, but the best cobbler in Dorchester couldn’t have matched them. Let alone us.

“Again! Try us again!” He was having a fine time, spinning on his heels, jumping up and down. I hoped he’d stamp his way through the floor, like Rumplestiltskin. Julian was whimpering again, and right then I wanted Sally more than I had in a long time—and Evan, too—because this was all way more than I could handle. But I didn’t want Julian any more scared than he already was, so I put my arm around him and told the boggart, “Enough already, we give up, we don’t want to play anymore. Just for God’s sake tell us what would please you, so we can take care of it, and you can stop messing with us, and we’ll all be pleased. How about it, okay?”

I had a feeling that wouldn’t cut a lot of ice, and I was right. The boggart got really mad then. He stopped jumping around, and he grabbed off his dumb little feathered hat and slammed it down on the floor. “Noo, Jenny Glookstein,” he said, and that weird deep voice had gotten very quiet, and scarier for it, “noo, ye’ll play awhile wi’ boggart yet, acause I say ye will. Ye’ll goo on a-thinking what might soften boggart’s heart, what might charm boggart to leave ye be. Acause I say so.” And he took a couple of steps toward us, and Julian—I’ll always remember this—Julian wiggled out from under my arm and wiggled himself in front of me. Scared as he was. I’ll remember.

I never saw Mister Cat. You don’t, until he’s there. He hit the boggart like a bolt of black lightning out of that storm, landing on his shoulders with all four sets of claws out and busy. The boggart squealed and lurched forward—and here came Miss Flufibucket, Miss Dustbunny, that Persian ghost-cat, flashing up from underneath to rake at his face… with real claws? I couldn’t say, even now, but the boggart screamed like a trapped rabbit, falling flat, arms wrapped wildly around his head. Mister Cat pounced on his chest, holding him down, and the Persian stood off, ready for a fast slash anytime he raised his head. You’d have thought they’d been doing this sort of thing forever.