Elf and Bear: Fleshbag

“What’s this?” said a gruff voice, and Thornbriar felt a rough hand grip him by the shoulder and lift him painfully to his feet.

The elf shook his head and blinked his eyes against the flickering firelight.  His muzzy sight focused and he found himself looking into the pinched and stony face of a goblin.

“Who are you?” the gangrel creature growled, giving the elf a shake.  “Answer up quick, or me and my lads will put paid to you without a fare-thee-well and not think twice.”  There was a chorus of snarls all around.

Thornbriar looked about fearfully.  There were seven goblins in all, standing around in what was plainly a make-shift camp.  Although none but the leader was as tall as the elf, they were broad at the shoulder and brawny.  All were dressed in tattered clothes and battered mail and armed with bows and spears.  The leader carried a sword, rusty and notched, which he now drew and held up to the elf’s neck.

“Talk!” ne hissed.  “What are you doing here?”

“I am Thornbriar of the Field Folk,” the elf twittered, the rusty sword tickling his throat.  “My home is far from here.  I went wandering and got lost.  I didn’t mean to trespass on any goblins!  Let me go and I’ll leave you alone, and never come back here again.  I swear!”

“Don’t you do it, Cap’n Fleshbag,” growled a goblin with an eye-patch.  “I say croak him now and hide the corpse.  Lot safer for us in the long run, I dare say.”

“Dehead ‘im! Dehead ‘im!” shouted another standing next to the fire.  “I hates all elves!”

“Who don’t?” said Fleshbag.  He lowered his sword. “But I got a better idea.  Gimpy, fetch out the leg-irons.  We don’t want our guest leaving too quick.”

While a short goblin with a twisted foot hurried to obey his orders, Captain Fleshbag looked Thornbriar up and down.  “Here, that’s a nice hat,” the goblin said.  “I’ll take that.”

He reached out and took the tall blue hat off the elf’s head, obviously savoring the elf’s anger and helplessness.

The goblin placed it on his own round noggin, tilting it at a jaunty angle.

“Now then,” Fleshbag said, as Gimpy came forward and snapped the leg-irons around Thornbriar’s thin ankles.  “You are own prisoner of war, and my personal slave, until you’re ransomed or the end of your miserable life,   I don’t care which.  You’ll cook and clean and carry for us all, though, and your first job is to get supper ready.  Pigbottom, show him where the food and pots are.”

A squat, fat goblin came forward to lead Thornbriar away while the Captain leaned back into a comfy drift of leaves between the huge twisted tree roots that stuck out of the creek bank.

“I’m taking a little nap,” Fleshbag announced, “and I expect to eat in an hour.  It better be good, elf.  Lads, you can keep the whip handy so he don’t get lazy.”  He pulled Thornbriar’s hat over his eyes and stretched out in exaggerated comfort.

 

Elf and Bear: Panic

 

Once outside Thornbriar began to trudge his way deeper into the woods, his visit to the Doctor already forgotten in his continued anger at the bear.  He walked along muttering, making telling points to passing trees or asking rhetorical questions of the sky.  All around the woods deepened and the light grew dimmer and dimmer as the evening drew on.  He went over ditches and through vast undergrowth, through oceans of ferns touched red by autumn under the black pillars of trees, heedless of everything about him.

Finally, tired out, he cast himself down on a small hillock warmed by the last rays of the setting sun.  He meant to rest only for a moment, but he must have been more worn out than he thought, for as he sat in the warmth of the sun and listened to the sighing of the wind in the grass, he soon fell asleep. 

Thornbriar woke to complete darkness.  Overhead no moon nor any star twinkled in the darkly shrouded sky.  All about him was the tall blackness of the whispering trees in a cold wind.  The elf scrambled to his feet and gazed wide-eyed all around.  In the shifting shadows nothing looked familiar, and there was not the faintest light to let him hope to guess a way.

“Good Heavens!” he thought.  “Well, what do I do?  Nothing to do but guess a direction, I suppose.  Well, the woods don’t go on forever, and I must come out somewhere.  I wish it weren’t so cold, or that I’d eaten something before I left.”

He stood hugging himself and stamping in the chill air, then chose a direction where there seemed to be a hint of a path and started following it.  In a moment, the dark woods had swallowed him up.

Perhaps if he had a little more wood lore he would have done better, but he was after all Field Folk and not one of the People of the Woods, and, being only a few hundreds of years old, was not very experienced.  All about him the trees grew thicker and denser and the underbrush more impassable.  He began to feel like a fly blundering blindly in a web.  His feet tangled in unseen roots, and the rattle of a year’s worth of leaves blown on the wind was like the hum of an angry hive around his ears.

Then Thornbriar panicked.  He never remembered what triggered it, but he suddenly shrieked and started to run, arms stretched out in front of him.  He jolted into trees that ricocheted him off into new directions.  He scrabbled his way frantically forward, branches whipping his body.  Blind fear drove the elf forward until he felt that his heart would split, but he didn’t stop until his foot came down on nothing but air and, with a cry, he tumbled down into an old, dry creek bed, stones and dirt slithering along with him.  There was an abrupt burst of light and noise.

Elf and Bear: The Fifth Transmogrific Cycle

 

“Good afternoon, Doctor.  You’ll never guess what that fool Bear’s done now.  After all my hard work and planning, what does he do but…”

“Goes on the carpet,” guessed the old man.  He selected a relatively clean pair of retorts, and uncorked the cut-glass bottle.  “My sister had a mastiff that was exactly the same way.  You can never make large animals too particular in their habits.”  He poured out a generous portion from the bottle into each retort and pushed one over to the flabbergasted elf.  “Here’s to your health,” he winked, raising his glass and downing it with relish.

“No, no, it’s nothing like that.”  Thornbriar waved the suggestion away as the aged alchemist sighed in contentment.  “He devoured an entire pie that I had made particularly for today.  Didn’t even leave me a slice.  That’s the thanks I get for taking him in out of the wild.”  The preoccupied elf took a sip from his retort, then frowned and held it up to the light to look at its color.  The liquid was a very light brown.  “What is this stuff?”

“Barley water,” said Dr. Gilpin, taking another swig.  My niece brews it herself.  Very healthful, they say.  Keeps the workings regular and the wind away.”  He held out the bottle.  “Top it off for you?”

“No thanks, this is fine,” said the elf, setting the retort down carefully.  “Anyway, I’ve a mind to boot him out.  Besides all the food he gobbles, he snores, Dr. Gilpin!  Snores fit to crack ice.  And he leaves hair everywhere!  I have to sweep at least twice a day.  A bear!  What was I thinking?”

“What you need is sanicle.”

“What?”

“Sanicle and lungwort.  They clear congestion and stop snoring.  Of course I can’t guarantee the complete effect on ursine anatomy, but…”

“No, that’s not the point,” said Thornbriar.  “Bear has got to…”

There was a muffled explosion from the inside of the furnace that made both jump.  “Good Heavens!” Gilpin cried.  “There must be an adverse reaction in the fifth transmogrific cycle!”  He hastily snatched up a pair of pliers and some padded gloves.  “I’m sorry, Thornbriar, but I must see to this!”  The oven was pinging and shaking as if it were full of popcorn.  The doctor approached it and cautiously opened the door.

There was a lick of flame, and Thornbriar saw, in the middle of the fire, what appeared to be a face of molten brass changing from frowning to smiling to frowning again in quick succession.  The Doctor began shouting some sort of Latin chant and throwing herbs on the fire.  The elf watched a moment, then when it became apparent the Doctor would be busy some time, he shrugged impatiently and made his way out. 

Elf and Bear: Introducing Dr. Gilpin

“Come in,” called a distant, hollow-sounding voice, and Thornbriar pushed open the heavy door on creaking hinges.  The front shop was empty and shadowy, but from the door in the back came a faint, pulsing light.  “Come along, come along,” said the voice, louder now.  “I’m back in the workroom.  And just bring along that bottle on the counter, will you?  This is tricky stuff.”

The elf picked up the bottle, a tall cut-glass decanter, and began feeling his way down the dimly lit hall.  He came to a doorway rimmed with light and opened it to a blast of heat and glare.  Squinting, he could make out the busy figure of Dr. Gilpin, dressed as usual in his long black robe, with the sleeves tucked up to his shoulders.  He was puffing away with a bellows into a cast iron furnace.

Thornbriar picked his way gingerly over to the old man who was gazing intently into the open stove, his long white eyebrows almost frizzled in the heat and his blunt craggy features basted in sweat.

“I believe the crisis has passed,” the doctor pronounced after a few moments.  “All it needs to do now is burn down and cool.”  He shook out his sleeves and wiped his brow, turning towards the elf.  “Oh, hello, Thornbriar.  I’m doing a bit of alchemy, you see. Just the thing on a cold day like today.  Let’s take that bottle over to the worktable.”

They sat down on a rough bench next to the table that clattered and clinked with glass alembics, retorts, and vials.  Dr. Gilpin started searching through them.  Thornbriar, unable to contain himself, began his tirade.

 

Elf and Bear: Thornbriar's Grouch

 

Chapter One: Goblins (Part 2)

The cold north wind cut through Thornbriar’s coat, but he paid it little heed.  He stumped along the dirt road, kicking the piles of leaves that drifted into his path.  Now and then he would pick up a stray branch, toy with it, then snap and throw it aside in anger.  Around him the day was more impressive than beautiful, with dark masses of clouds being driven along and the oak trees moaning and singing in the wind.

It was nothing to the elf, who merely hugged his thin arms closer and made his way deeper into the woods, muttering and grumbling to himself about stupid bears and paying no attention to where he was going.

With a start of surprise he found himself in a clearing by the roadside, with the rambling stone house of Dr. Gilpin suddenly before him.  It occurred to Thornbriar that this was exactly where he had been headed, in order to explain to someone who would understand the iniquity of bears and the folly of sharing a house with one.  He went up to the door and rang the bell.

Dr. Gilpin was a human, and it is unusual for any of the Field Folk to have anything to do with humans, but Thornbriar was a little eccentric by elvish standards.  Most magical creatures consider humans dull and tedious when not downright dangerous, but Thornbriar always found Dr. Gilpin full of fascinating lore about distant lands and stories about the stars, and there was little the tall old man didn’t know about the properties of herbs and roots.  The elf himself could only work Small Magics, but the doctor was so impressed when Thornbriar did that it was rather flattering.  Now Dr. Gilpin seemed the perfect ally to hear his troubles.

The elf rang the bell again, glancing absently at the multi-colored bottles in the shop window as the last echoes of the bell faded inside the building.

Elf and Bear Begins

 

As I recall, I was in my Junior English class in high school when I made this little drawing. This would have been 1980. I was highly pleased with it, somehow; it had more movement than my usually highly static pictures, and I saw potential character there. The bear should have been bigger or the elf smaller, of course; more of a Mowgli-to-Baloo proportion, I decided. It haunted me long afterwards. I made a clay model of the Bear once and somewhere along the line I decided the elf was named Thornbriar. But for almost twenty years, that's where things stood.

Finally in 1999 I decided that I would buckle down and write a novel, and I chose Elf and Bear to be my subject. I had been thinking about them for almost twenty years and I thought I had a handle on their characters. I didn't have any clear direction for the book: each chapter would be a separate adventure, a short story in itself. I would begin writing, at least a page a day, and see where it went. At the end of the year, I reasoned, I would have at least have a 365-page manuscript. I started to fill up a series of red-covered composition note books.

I was coming to the end of the story when Mom passed away. That knocked me into a depression that lasted quite a while. I put the finished first draft away, with the sense of 'Now what?' and 'So what?' overwhelming me. When I got my first computer, the on-again-off-again transcribing of 'Elf and Bear' was one of the many scattered projects I attempted. When I lost that file when my computer crashed I was too despondent to try again right away, but by 2005, with Mike's help, I finally had a complete edited version of the book. And then Mike passed away, and the world was again turned on its head. Another decade went by before I started my second book, "A Grave on Deacon's Peak" and had that published.

Looking at it now, I can definitely see that in needs more structural work (and certainly a better title than Elf&Bear"). Parts of it I think are pretty good and some of it I wince to read. I'm going to put the better parts up here, re-reading it a bit at a time myself as I do so, and try to come to some conclusion if it is worthy of the time and labor of a complete overhaul. Without further prologue, here is Part 1 of Chapter One.

 Chapter One:  Goblins 

     Oak trees rattled their bare branches in the sharp, November wind outside Thornbriar the Elf's underground home.  A hail of scattered leaves tapped and skittered against the door and windows.  Inside the house the fire was going merrily and the kettle was whistling.  Thornbriar looked into the pantry and frowned.

     "Bear," he said, his nose twitching with annoyance, "Do you know what happened to the apple pie I baked last night?  I made it especially for today's tea."

     There was a guilty silence from the overstuffed chair where the bear was resting his shaggy bulk in front of the fire.  He pretended (not too convincingly) to be absorbed in a book on the magic of fireflies, pressing his big, snuffly nose almost to the page.

     Thornbriar shut the pantry door with a snap that made the bear drop his book and look up startled at his friend.  At three feet tall the elf was less than half the height of Bear standing on his hind legs, but the enormous bruin began to shuffle his paws and look nervously away as Thornbriar turned and advanced on him.

The elf’s long forefinger pointed accusingly right between Bear’s black, nearsighted eyes.

“Well?” the elf demanded.

“Er…ah…well, to tell the truth, old fellow,” Bear stammered, closing his book.  “The truth of the matter is…uh…I ate it, last night, after you went to bed.  It smelled so good I had to have a slice.”  His smile was appeasing.

“A slice,” said Thornbriar.

“Well, one thing led to another, that is to say, one slice led to another, and by the time I realized what was happening, there was only a tiny bit left. It seemed embarrassing to leave just that for you, almost insulting.”  He gulped.  “So I ate it too.”

“This won’t do, Bear,” the elf said.  “If you go on like this we’ll be out of food before winter’s half gone.”

“I can’t help it,” Bear said.  “It’s the nature of bears to eat a lot at this time of year to get ready for the long winter’s sleep.”

Thornbriar snorted.  “Don’t give me that rubbish.”

He went over to the coat rack in the corner by the door.  “You never spend that much time sleeping anymore.  You don’t have to, with me feeding and housing you.  Out raiding smokehouses every other night is more like it.  Well, I’ve had just about enough of it.”

He whirled his dark blue coat off of the rack and onto his back, then jammed a tall, peaked blue hat on his head.

“Where are you going?” asked Bear anxiously.

“Out.”

“But what about the tea?”

“You can finish it off yourself,” said the elf, angrily winding a muffler around his neck.  He opened the door and paused dramatically to face the confounded bruin.

“As for me, I am going to get some fresh air, as far away from greedy bears as I can get.  Good day to you!”

With a flourish he slammed the door and was gone, leaving Bear to contemplate the half-set table with a long face.

Tolkien's Ordinary Virtues

Today I determined that after about a year of staying away from our local public library I'd drop in for a quick visit, mainly to browse their little used bookstore. I've found some good things for very reasonable prices at the place.

What I found there today was what I call a 'peripheral' Middle-earth book. It is not a work by Tolkien. It does not even examine Tolkien's work for its own sake, or the literary phenomenon that Tolkien is. Instead it studies the Middle-earth stories for their spiritual themes, as if a fine loaf of bread were being examined for its vitamin and mineral content.

While such an approach is possible (and I have several other books that show it has been done), I am not sure if it something Tolkien himself would have approved of. He once called such an approach like cutting up a ball in search of its bounce. I get the feeling that this book exists for the discussion of 'ordinary virtues', and Middle-earth is the sauce that helps them go down.

However, I will never not buy a Tolkien-related book that I do not have, especially if it only costs one dollar. I have long-ago sussed out the moral (even Christian) content,  and do not mind having it gone over again. “Hobbits delighted in such things, if they were accurate; they liked to have books filled with things that they already knew, set out fair and square with no contradictions.” I even have hopes that it may reveal a fact or two that I never considered before, or show a connection that I never occurred to me.

New DVDs and Books

 This Sunday, for the first time in months, my brother John and I went to the Half-Price Books in San Marcos. That has been our usual stomping grounds for years. Many is the time we spent a few hours combing the shelves. The book store was much changed, with fewer shelves spread out to give space and the chairs where people could rest from their browsing removed. Although the pickings seemed slimmer, I did manage to find some good things.

A mini-series based on the life of my favorite Founding Father ever since I watched the movie "1776". The life of that thorny, businesslike, principled man was of course more complicated than any musical could express, and "John Adams" goes a far way to exploring it in more depth. Paul Giamatti is perhaps one of our best actors and his portrayal of Adams as a common man negotiating his way around such men as Washington, Franklin, and Jefferson, not to mention the kings of France and Great Britain, as he tries to help establish a country ruled not by great men or by mobs, but by law. It doesn't hurt (for me) that when he is on his farm in his vest and with a stick in his hand, he strongly resembles a hobbit! 

O Brother, Where Art Thou?

For years I resisted watching this movie, then finally saw it and wondered why I had. I suppose it was because I had an unreasonable aversion to George Clooney. Anyway, I found it to be a mythical, mystical, musical adventure as three fugitives make their way through the seedily visionary landscape of 1930's America, recapitulaing (in a sense) the homeward voyage of Ulysses. I always miss parts of it when it comes on TV, so I'm glad to finally have a copy I can watch any time.

How I explained this book to my brother: "[Peter] Ackroyd is a beautiful "cherry-picker" when it comes to biographical detail, by which I mean you don't get all the bugs and stems and unripe fruit in his basket that might clutter a more overly-enthusiastic biographer's work. He doesn't undersell Charlie's accomplishments but there is little hero-worship or excuses, especially when it comes to his private life. I hope that doesn't make it sound like a slash job; it isn't. Ackroyd presents facts and statements without interpretation, mostly."

I've been seeing this book (or one like it) for over forty years, and I seem to have finally found my way into it at last. I anticipate at least a solid week of reading through the stories, then who knows how many decades digesting them.

I read a good lump of "The Ickabog" when it was being published chapter by chapter online. I found it techically fascinating, rather than engaging as a story. Here Rowling was dealing with a pure fantasy or fairy tale for the first time (if you don't count the in-world "Tales of Beedle the Bard"), as opposed to the somewhat 'urban fantasy' of the Harry Potter books. An imaginary land and a 'once upon a time' period do not really seem to be her cup of tea; in fact it reminded me of Stephen King's unsatisfactory foray into pure fantasy, "The Eyes of the Dragon". I think her writing is too blatantly psychological, sociological, and allegorical for the form of Fantasy she is using. And allowing her young readers to illustrate the volume seems a bit 'twee' to me and something of a lazy affection grab. I suppose I bought this book more as an artifact than as a promising read. 

A Few Things That Remind Me of McQueeney

 

A Momentous Date

 

Taking a break today to wish my sister Susan a Happy Birthday. Also known in her day as Miss Mouse, Smooch, and Swee-Swah, do not call her Sue! That's her in the hat.

My First Grade Teacher

[Mrs. Edith Roberts]

They say that almost everyone hates their First Grade teacher. I have to say that although I was not particulary fond of her, I don't harbor any major resentments against the woman, at least not from the days I spent in her classroom. I was pathetically eager to please and had a compunction to learn, or to at least excel my classmates. I think I can say she wasn't particularly fond of me, either; she had her pets and favorites among the "richies" of the lakeside resort area. We were firmly poor, but not exactly of the redneck community, and so rather hard to pigeonhole. I was fairly intelligent but emotionally more immature than my classmates. I'm sure most educators of the day weren't happy with hard to categorize cases like myself. 

I did have several run-ins with her later when I was in other classes and she was taking her shifts as schoolyard monitor. One time one of her favorites accused me of knocking her off of the monkey bars (a charge I deny to this day, and still feel the injustice). Another time, just for fun, I closed my eyes and started walking towards the train tracks at the end of the schoolyard. I was peacefully lost in my mind when suddenly Mrs. Roberts grabbed me from behind and hauled me back in. What with the wind I had not heard her calling and blowing her whistle. It seemed to me that what she thought of as my ignoring her was what made her more upset than any danger I might have been in. She thought I was flouting her authority instead of just being lost in my stupid-ass dreams.

Well, as I say, I don't really bear any hard resentment to Mrs. Roberts. Now if you ask my brother John, he can tell you the tale of their epic conflicts and confrontations. But that is not my story.