Chapter 14 Chapter 14 Crowded Again with Earth Elves

Charmain was still thinking about Calcifer when he woke up the next morning.She came out of the bathroom to find Peter busy changing the sheets on Uncle William's bed, stuffing the old sheets into the laundry bag.Charmain sighed, and went to work again. "Just right," she said to Waif, putting down the bowl of dog food. "Let him go about his happy business. I'll go find Calcifer. Wanna come with me to the rock?" Waif was, as usual, willing to go wherever Charmain went.After breakfast Waif eagerly followed Charmain through the living room to the front door.But they didn't go to Chengyan.Charmain's head was barely near the doorknob when Waif rushed from behind and pushed the door open.Rollo was at the door, getting his daily jug of milk with his little blue hand.Waif yelled a few times, jumped on top of him, put her mouth around his neck, and pinned him to the ground.

"Peter!" cried Charmain, standing in a splash of milk. "Come on! We need a bag!" She put one foot on Rollo to keep him from moving. "Bag! Bag!" she screamed.Rollo struggled frantically, flapping under her shoes, while Waif let go of her mouth and started barking.Rollo joined the cacophony of voices, "Help! Murder! Violence!" screamed piercingly. Peter came running.Seeing the scene outside the door, he grabbed one of Mrs. Baker's embroidered grocery bags and slid it over Rollo's struggling legs. Charmain finally managed to catch his breath and began to explain.Then Peter put the bag all over Rollo, and Rollo thrashed and writhed in the bag, splashing the milk while he reached into his pocket.

"Good job!" said Peter. "Can you get some tape out of that pocket? Don't let him get away." Charmain found a long purple tape from that pocket.He added, "Have you had your breakfast? All right. Tie the top of this bag tight. Grab it. I'll get ready. We'll go to them." "Help! Help!" was still shouting when Peter handed the bag to Charmain. "Shut up," Charmain said to the bag, holding tightly to the mouth of the bag with the purple band with both hands.The bags writhed on the floor, and Charmain watched as Peter drew ribbons of various colors from each pocket.He tied red to his left thumb, green to his right thumb, purple, yellow, pink to the first three fingers of his right hand, then black, white, and blue to the first three fingers of his left hand superior.Waif stood in the doorway, frayed ears turned up, watching the process curiously. "Are we looking for the end of the rainbow?" Charmain asked.

"No, but I need it so I can remember the way to the goblin," Peter explained. "Okay, close the front door and let's go." "Big liar!" the bag was still calling. "You too!" Peter said, walking towards the inner door.Waif followed, Charmain dragging the churning bag. Turn right after they go through the door.Charmain wanted to say absently that she thought that was the way to the meeting hall.She remembered how easy it was for the elves to come and go, and for Rollo to sink quickly into the dirt of the hill meadow.She felt as though it was only a matter of time before Rollo escaped from under the embroidered bag.She put one hand under the bag, but she was sure it wasn't enough.Milk was still dripping between her fingers, but she tried to spell and trap Rollo.The problem is, she doesn't know how to do it.All she could think of was to cast her spell on those pipes that Peter had leaked.stay inside!stay inside!She murmured to Rollo in her mind, rubbing the bottom of the bag at the same time.Each rub brought a muffled yelp from the bag, making her even more certain that Rollo was struggling.So she just followed Peter around, not paying attention to the way to the goblin.By the time she noticed, they had arrived.

They were standing outside a huge bright cave full of little blue people running around.She wasn't quite sure what most of them were doing, as the view was blocked by a strange object at the entrance.This thing looks a lot like a horse-drawn sleigh, which people in Upper Norland would use when it snows in winter and can't use a horse-drawn carriage, but the hole looks like there is no horse tied in front of it.It does have a huge curved handle on the back.In fact, there were bent parts all over that thing.More than a dozen earth elves are beating on it, climbing up and down.Some are lined with padding and woolen blankets inside, others are hammered and carved, and others are painted with curly blue flowers on a golden background outside.This thing must be gorgeous when it's finished, whatever it is.

Peter said to Charmain: "Can I trust you to be more polite this time? At least remember to be tactful?" "I could try it," Charmain said. "decide as things go." "Then let me do it," Peter told her.He patted the back of the busy goblin closest to him. "Sorry. Can you tell me where I can find Timminz?" "Go into the hole, right in the middle," cried the earth elf, pointing in the direction with her paintbrush. "He's making a cuckoo clock. What do you want him for?" "We have something very important to tell him," Peter replied.

This intrigued most of the goblins working in front of the sled.Some of them turned to look at Waif worriedly.Waif is immediately bubbly, shy, and adorable.The remaining elves looked at Charmain and the tumbling embroidered bag. "Who's in the bag?" one asked Charmain. "Rolo," Charmain replied. Most of them nodded, not looking surprised at all.Peter asked again, "Can we meet Timmins?" They nodded together and told him, "Go." Charmain had the feeling that no one here liked Rollo.Rollo seemed to know this too, and he stopped struggling and shouting, and Peter walked around the strange thing, Charmain following him, holding the bag aside so it wouldn't get the paint.

"What are you doing?" she asked the nearest goblin. "It was commissioned by the elves," one answered.Another said, "It costs a lot." Another said, "The elves always pay well." Charmain went into the cave, feeling still confused.The cave is huge, and there are little goblin babies running around among the busy adults.Most of them screamed and ran away as soon as they saw Waif.Their parents hid behind where they were working and continued to paint, polish, and carve.Peter and the others passed rocking horses, toy houses, baby chairs, big pendulum clocks, wooden benches, clockwork puppets, and finally saw the cuckoo clock.There must be no mistake.That's too big.The huge wooden frame soars into the magically lit roof; the huge clock face is supported alone and fills the wall beside the frame; and a group of earth elves are trying to feather the cuckoo in the clock The cuckoo was bigger than Charmain and Peter put together.Charmain wondered who would need a cuckoo clock that big.

Timminz was crawling around on the huge mechanical device, holding a small pincer in his hand. "There he is," said Peter.He recognized his nose.Peter walked over to the gigantic contraption and cleared his throat. "Sorry. Huh. Excuse me." Timminz, hanging from a metal reel, glanced at them. "Oh, it's you." He saw the bag. "Are you going to kidnap people now?" Rollo must have heard Timminz's voice and felt like he had found a friend. "Help! Help!" he yelled in the bag. "It's Rollo," Timminz said accusingly. "Yes," said Peter. "We brought him to confess to you. Lubbock on the Hill paid him off to cause trouble between you and Wizard Nolan."

"Nonsense, framed!" The voice in the bag was still shouting. But Timminz was already terrified. "Lubbock?" he said. "Yes," said Peter. "We saw him yesterday asking Lubbock for a payment. And Lubbock took a pot of gold from the end of the rainbow and gave it to him." "Nonsense!" the voice in the bag protested loudly. "Framed!" "We both saw it," Peter said. "Get him out," Timminz said. "Let him talk." Peter nodded to Charmain.She took her hand from under the bag and stopped meditating the spell she hoped would help.Rollo immediately dropped to the floor and started spitting out the milk-stained wool of the embroidery, and crumbs, all the while staring at Peter.

My magic really worked!I trapped him inside!Charmain thought. "Did you see what they were like?" said Rollo angrily. "Put a man in a bag, stuff his mouth, and keep him from talking, and they're still slandering!" "You can talk now," Timminz said. "Did you take a pot of gold from Lubbock and start a fight between us and the wizard?" "How could I do that?" Rollo replied predictably. "No earth elf would risk his life to talk to Lubbock. You know it all!" Now a group of goblins had gathered - still at a safe distance from Waif - and Rollo waved to them excitedly. "Stay sane!" he said. "I am a victim of a lie!" "Take some of you to search his cave," Timminz ordered. Several ground elves set off immediately.Rollo jumped up. "I'm going with you!" he yelled. "I want to prove that there is nothing there!" Rollo had barely taken three steps when Waif grabbed his blue coat from behind and threw him to the ground again.She was crouching over him, her teeth biting at his clothes, her frayed tail wagging from side to side, and one ear turned up at Charmain, as if to say, "Am I behaving?" "You've done a great job," Charmain told her. "Good dog." Rollo yelled, "Get her off! She's hurting my back!" "No. You're going to stay here until they come back from searching your cave," Charmain said.Rollo folded his arms and sat on the ground in righteous indignation.Charmain turned to Timminz and said, "Who wants a clock that big, please? While we wait," she explained, only to see Peter shaking his head at her. Timminz looked at the huge parts of the clock. "Crown Prince Ludvik," he said, tinged with melancholy. "He's going to order a clock for Merry Castle." The melancholy overshadowed the elation. "He hasn't paid a penny. He's never paid. To think how rich he really is—" His words were interrupted by the earth elves running back. "Here!" they cried. "Is this it? Under his bed!" The earth elf who ran ahead held the pot in both hands.It looked just like an ordinary clay pot, the kind you would use to simmer on the stove, except it had a faint iridescent glow all around it. "That's it," said Peter. "Then what do you think he did with the gold?" asked the earth elf. "What do you mean? What do I do with the gold?" Rollo asked. "That jar is full of—" He stopped, realizing he had slipped. "It's gone. See for yourself if you don't believe me," replied another earth-elf.He put the jar in front of Rollo's spread legs. "That's how we found it." Rollo leaned over to look inside the jar.He cried out in sorrow.He reached into the jar and pulled out only a handful of dry yellow leaves.So he reached in and grabbed another handful, and another handful, until finally he reached into the empty jar with both hands, and sat slumped among the dead leaves all over the ground. "It's all gone!" he wailed. "All turned into dead leaves! That lubbock tricked me!" "So you admit that Lubbock paid you to cause trouble?" Timminz asked. Rollo turned sideways and gave Timminz a look. "I confessed nothing, I was just stolen." Peter coughed. "Huh. I think Lubbock didn't just trick him, he did something worse. It laid eggs on Rollo, right when he turned around." There were exclamations all around.The goblins with the big noses all looked at Rollo, their blue faces pale with terror, as did their noses and bodies, and then they turned to look at Peter. "It's true. We've all seen it," Peter said. They turned to Charmain.She nodded. "It's true," she said. "Lie!" Rollo yelled. "You guys are kidding me!" "No, we didn't!" said Charmain. "Before you got into the ground, Lubbock extended its spawning tentacles and stabbed them into your back. Didn't you just say your back hurts?" Rollo's eyes were fixed on Charmain.He took her word for it.His mouth was open.Waif yelled and hurried away.Rollo threw the jar aside and stamped his feet among the dead leaves, screaming and screaming until his face turned aquamarine. "I'm hopeless!" he cried in pain. "I am a walking corpse! Something is multiplying in my body! Help! Oh, please help me, someone help me!" No one came to rescue him.All the goblins stepped aside and looked at him in horror.Peter looked disgusted with him.A land-elf says, "What a disgraceful show!" And this seems unfair to Charmain, since she can't help feeling sympathy for Rollo. "The elves can help him," she said to Timminz. "What did you say?" Timminz moved his fingers.Everyone suddenly fell silent.Although Rollo was still stomping his feet and opening and closing his mouth, no one was listening to him. "What did you say?" Timminz said to Charmain. "Elf," Charmain said. "They know how to get Lubbock's eggs out of people." "Yes, they will," echoed Peter. "Wizard Nolan was infused with Lubbock's egg. That's why they took him to heal. An elf brought the egg that was taken from him yesterday." "The elves charge a lot," said a ground-elf at Charmain's right foot, in a characteristic-sounding voice. "I think the king will pay for it," said Charmain. "Huh!" Timminz frowned all the way to his nose.He sighed. "I suppose," he said, "we could make them that sleigh-chair for free in exchange for them treating Rollo. Damn it! That's two commissions unpaid! You carry Rollo to bed , I'll go talk to the elves. Also, I remind you again, don't go near the grass." "Oh, it's all right now," said Peter happily. "Lubbock is dead. The fire demon killed him." "What?" All the earth elves screamed. "Dead?" they exclaimed. "Really? You mean the Fire Demon at the King's? Did he really kill it?" "Yes, really," Peter roared over the din. "He destroyed Lubbock, and he destroyed the eggs brought by the elves." "We thought he also sacrificed himself," Charmain added.She was pretty sure none of the elves heard what she said.They were all busy dancing and cheering, throwing their blue hats into the air. After the noise was quieted down, four strong goblins carried Rollo away, and he kept kicking and screaming.Timminz said seriously to Peter, "That Lubbock scares us all, and the crown prince and others are all its descendants. How do you think we should thank the fire demon?" "Put back the tap in Nolan's wizard's kitchen," Peter replied immediately. "That," said Timmintz, "of course it should. It's because of Rollo that those dragon heads were taken away. I mean, we're just earth elves, and we can do something for the Fire Demon that he can't do." thing?" "I know," Charmain said.Everyone listened quietly and respectfully to her. "Calcifer and his... er... family, are helping to find the king's missing coins. Can you help them?" There were whispers at Charmain's feet, "It's so easy!"Timminz breathed a sigh of relief, his brows fully flaring, which made his nose - and his whole face - twice as long as before. "That's easy," he said. "We're not going to pay you." He looked across the cave to see at least sixty cuckoo clocks hanging there, swinging in sixty different rhythms. "If you come with me now, I think we should just be able to see the process of the coin disappearing. Are you sure the fire demon will be happy about it?" "Absolutely," Charmain replied. "Then come with me," Timminz said.He led them into the depths of the cave. It seems like a long way to go where they're going.Charmain was as bewildered as when he came to the elf cave.The cave is dimly lit, and the road is rough and winding.Timminz would say from time to time, "Take three small steps, turn right" or "Take eight human steps, turn left, then immediately turn right, then turn left again", and it took so long that even Waif was tired Screaming, wanting to be carried away.Charmain picked her up about halfway along. "I have to explain that the earth elves here belong to different races," Timminz was talking, and there seemed to be some light in front of him. "I think my group is more manageable than theirs." Before Charmain could ask him what he meant, he began to turn right and turn left quickly and slowly, and made some more detours the distance.At last she found that they had come to the end of an underground passage that shone with a cold green light.Marble steps, overgrown with green mildew, led down into the trees.Those bushes must have been planted on either side of the steps, but they had grown to completely cover the space by now. Waif started growling in what sounded like a dog twice her size. "Hush!" Timmintz whispered. "Don't make any noise from here on." Waif stopped screaming immediately, but Charmain still felt the screaming in her hot little body.Charmain turned around, to make sure Peter could keep quiet too. Peter wasn't there, just herself, Waif, and Timminz. Charmain was very annoyed and knew what was going on.Somewhere along the chaotic road Timminz said "turn left" and Peter turned right.The situation may also be reversed.Charmain didn't know when this happened, but she knew it must be. It's all right, she thought.He had so many colored bands around his fingers that he could find his way to Ingle and back.Perhaps he will arrive at Uncle William's house earlier than we do.So she put Peter's business behind her, concentrated her attention, and began to tiptoe up the slippery, musty steps, then gently pushed aside another leaf, and looked out through the bushes. The sun was shining outside the grove, the grass was green and shining beautifully, and a dazzling white path ran through the grove.The trees on either side of the path were carved with circles, dots, cones, discs, like a geometry lesson, leading to a fairy-tale palace - surrounded by many minarets and covered with tiny blue roofs.Charmain recognized the Castle of Pleasure, where Prince Ludwig lived.She thought with some shame that every time she saw a palace mentioned in a book, she imagined such a building in her mind. I must be very unimaginative, she thought.Then think about it and think it's not.Every time my father made shortbread shortbread for May Day, the shortbread box would have Happy Castle printed on it.After all, Happy Castle is the pride of Upper Norland.No wonder it has to go so far!she thought.We must have gone deep into the Norlan Valley!This is still the perfect palace in my heart! There were footsteps on the scorching white path, and Prince Ludvik appeared.He was dressed in luxurious blue and white silk and was walking towards the palace.He stopped just as he reached the clump of trees where Charmain was, and turned around. "Come on, hurry up!" he said angrily. "Come on!" "We're working hard, Your Highness!" said a breathless voice. A group of earth elves walked into their field of vision with heavy steps, each of them bowed their waists and carried a bulging leather bag.They all looked less blue than dark green, and none of them were very happy.It might have been the sunlight—the goblins liked to live in the dark—but Charmain thought their color looked more like ill health.Their legs trembled.One or two were still coughing violently.The one at the end of the line seemed to be in very bad shape, and he stumbled and fell, dropping his bag on the ground and spilling some gold coins onto the white path. At this time, the inconspicuous gentleman also appeared.He walked up to the fallen goblin and started kicking him.He wasn't kicking hard or hard: he was just trying to get a machine going again.After being kicked by him, the earth elf climbed up, desperately picked up the gold coins, put them all back in the bag, and staggered on the road again.The inconspicuous gentleman stopped kicking him, but walked up to Prince Ludvik. "It doesn't look like it's too heavy," he said to the prince. "It may be the last time. They have no money left, unless the king sells his books." Prince Ludvik laughed. "He'd rather die if he did that—but that's fine with me. We've got to find some other way to make money. It's too expensive to maintain Happy Castle." He looked back at the wobbly ground elves. "Keep going, don't stop! I'm going back to the royal residence for tea." The inconspicuous gentleman nodded and walked back to the elves, about to kick them again, when the prince waited for him and said, "To tell you the truth, if I don't eat a single pancake again in my life , isn't that too fast for me!" The earth elves saw the inconspicuous gentleman approaching, so they tried to quicken their pace.Charmain seemed to wait a long time longer before the group disappeared from her sight before she could hear their footsteps.She hugged the restless Waif, who seemed about to jump off and run after the team.Charmain looked down at Timmins among the leaves. "Why didn't you tell anyone before? Why didn't you even tell Wizard Nolan?" "No one ever asked," Timminz replied, looking aggrieved. Yeah, of course no one will ask!Charmain thought.Because of this, Rollo was bribed, causing a quarrel between the elves and Uncle William!If he hadn't fallen ill, perhaps he would have asked eventually.It's a good thing Lubbock is dead, she thought.If Prince Ludwick is Lubbock's child, according to what Timminz said, Lubbock probably wants to kill the crown prince and rule the country instead of him.That's probably what she heard.But now there is Prince Ludvik to deal with, she thought.I should really tell the king about him. "These goblins seem to be working hard," she said to Timminz. "Yes," Timminz replied. "But they didn't ask for help either." So if they don't ask, you'll never think of helping, right?Charmain thought.Ok!I gave up! "Can you tell me how to get home?" she asked. Timmins hesitated. "Do you think the Fire Demon would be happy to know that all the money went to the Castle of Joy?" he asked. "Yes," Charmain replied. "At least his family will."