JMJ

Chapter Sixteen

Toad in a Bucket

Big Marie was a gorgeous specimen. It seemed in her smooth recesses from the underside to be another world of its own even if one could not sense it with the eyes so much as the feel. Needless to say that to the size of a rat she was like the dome of Hagia Sophia, but naturally more like the Dome of Notre Dame. Matthias would not have been surprised to see the golden lady in splendor atop such a bell, a small planet under the protection of a queenly patroness. A vastness and a peace overcame him. He almost forgot himself.

Then the lead Rat swung along the rope. Startled from his preoccupation, Matthias suddenly held on as best he could, reminded reluctantly of his current form. His tail was a clumsy whip more than a help to his balance without knowing how to use it properly. He curled it round himself and the cord. The only thing he could say about it was that somehow his humbled appearance fit how he felt in the presence of the bell, but it did not help in the physical realm of being.

In the process of clinging as he was, he missed the leap the lead Rat had taken and was still holding on as the rope resettled. He frowned as he slowly eased his tight muscles and stared down into the black hole which now looked quite infinite.

"Jump!" exclaimed the Rat.

Disgruntled sigh done with, Matthias wriggled his bumbling little body, and he managed to get the rope moving. Forcing himself not to look down again, vertigo or no vertigo, he leapt with a squeal. Then he fell with a fright too much for any sound at all. He had miscalculated with such a different size to deal with, but just as his fur was standing on end for the drop into darkness, he felt a lurch upward and a terrible pain in his tail.

It was a sensation so strange to feel such pain in a place that did not use to exist. He still could not cry out, but his eyes widened hugely as he realized that he had been caught up by a Crow.

Was the Crow insane? Perhaps not in the belfry as much as a bat might be, but was he as black as a tar barrel? He seemed more purple than black in his fine feathers like a lordly coat; though it might have been the blinding swirl of the pain in his tail before the Crow released him from his beak. Matthias then went tumbling into the rafter boards.

The Crow stood there a moment with his broad chest held forth, and he reminded Matthias of Claude Frollo more than anyone very nice, especially with Matthias feeling more deformed than ever in his ratty heap as he tried to recover himself. He panted with his little pink tongue and shook his spiky white fur with brown fancy-rat hood. He chattered his gnawing incisors. Then he shook his head and blinked his beady eyes again as the other Rat said in his serene little voice, "This is Ratty Pâté; though what his real name is, I cannot say. He believes he has what it takes to be a spy."

"I… do?" asked Matthias.

"Do you?" asked the Crow with a deep bass voice as Matthias popped his hat that had fallen near at hand neatly back onto his little rat head.

"Uh, er, yes! Enlighten me, please, Mr.… Crow," said Matthias rubbing his tail.

"No, you enlighten me. Impress me," said the Crow.

"Uh…" Matthias paused, then breathed in, trying to keep in tune with… well, something he was not sure what.

The boards creaking in the wind as though they were on a pirate ship in the waves of a sea more than in a tower high in the air? Well, he thought he could hear the sound of gulls and could smell the scent of seawater amidst the thinning scent of incense and smoke.

Whether it was the sea air or not, his poetry suddenly returned to him and quite unexpectedly:

I can sneak and slither.

I can creep and quiver.

I can pull out that sliver!

I'm awfully quick,

I can fake being sick!

I can be any Nick, Mick, or Rick.

I can decode any message,

Don't mind sifting through sewage!

I'm ready for the worst! Yes, I can manage!

It's like a calling from the sea!

—Here! Why don't you have some more tea?

You can't have less than nothing from me.

"Tea? I've had none yet," said the Crow.

"Well, there was a lot of chamomile down there, so I would not have thought it strange had you popped out some Darjeeling or something."

"Camel meal?" the Crow demanded. "You make that into tea? I know you're code name is 'Pâté', but I don't think camel meat would be much to my delicate pallet much less camel tea."

Matthias winced. "I'm beyond amazing?"

"I'm sure that you are," said the Crow.

"Beyond tantalizing… uh…" Maybe with a name like Pâté he should be careful about food phrases in front of a carrion bird even if that bird was a bit prissy.

The Crow only smiled. "Well, we'll simply see. And you're a poet as well."

"Oh, you noticed," said Matthias quite impressed. So he went on:

That's just the start of what I can do!

I have my own X-ray goggles too

Sure to impress and go right through you!

Just wait till you see my skills in climbing up walls,

Winding my way through treacherous malls,

And cleverly placing those bugs in the halls.

In piloting, (with a scholarship) I could have an impressive degree.

I've been known to dabble in chemistry,

I've been to Hungary, Germany, and Tennessee.

I'll leave not an unturned leaf!

I can bring home the beef

And navigate through the toughest reef!

Oh, what do you think?

All I need is a wink!

Come! Sign me up! Where is the ink?

"Well, my dear Rat. I suppose you are right!" said the Crow. "You are just what I have been looking for all of this time."

"I knew that I was," said Matthias not quite knowing what was going on at all since the words coming to him were almost not his own but something as though psychically given to him on a psychic script. It was like being in a play reading lines on the go and sounding professional enough on the first try so that each line was new to him and yet still fit the mood of the scene. It was almost in the way a child might view how voice-acting might work of just a recite just being that good at reading.

"Come, step this way," said the Crow thrusting a wing towards the balcony through a hole in the wall that was like a broad doorway for the size of a crow and a rat. "I will show you some things that are sure to impress you."

"Oh?" winced Matthias somewhat fearing he might be thrown clean off the wall and down into a cobbled medieval street to the sight of a crowd screaming about the plague.

The Crow took from under his wing a shiny black pen, and from under his other wing he pulled out a long shiny nose trimmer.

See, this pen explodes with a radius of fifty feet.

This silent shooter slips clear across the street.

You'll need a bullet proof vest.

No, I don't jest!

You'll need a pair of bullet proof gloves, socks and hat!

And lest, we forget, my dear little rat—

You're a poet too?" asked Matthias.

The Crow only nodded.

You'll need an umbrella in your employ

It's a dangerous tool; no, not a toy!

Oh, yes! You'll need this too;

Make sure not to use it for glue!

It's a sticky fast-acting acid

That no soap can rid.

As soon as this bottle was in Matthias' paws he threw it away as there was some of the glue dried on the outside that already stung him.

Oh, you'll want this special hoe in case you're stuck farming—

"How charming," Matthias butted in.

"Indeed," said the Crow.

"No, the explosive animal feed," Matthias explained.

The Crow shrugged and went on as before:

One minute there is wine and curry,

The next, deception and treachery.

There are plane crashes, train smashes…

Don't you trust those long lashes!

For poisons there are tonics, antidotes…

For your sake, I hope you've taken notes.

It's a dangerous world, the world of spies!

They say the jungle's most dangerous; I'll tell you it's lies!

Oh, what can I say?

It's dog eat dog, Mr. Ratté.

Matthias blinked. "Then where is the dog?"

"Which dog?" asked the other Rat.

" Kib the dog, I think," said Matthias.

"Oh, he was a lie to begin with. Much like your lies, actually," shrugged the Crow with a bustling of feathers.

Matthias thought about saying that the words were not his fault and had come out of his mouth of their own accord, but he changed his mind.

"Then… what was the point of this interview?" he asked as though the Crow was quite aware of what was happening regardless.

The Crow merely led the way to the hole now, and Matthias reluctantly followed. Unless the Crow lifted him up again, however there was little chance of being thrown off a ledge. The stone wall around the balcony had no holes as it was a fortress rampart. The sky was grey but only lightly-so, and it seemed even from this small portion of sky that there were rays of sunlight filtering through somewhere.

Matthias felt freer out here despite himself. The breeze was strong enough that it wafted down to them, and he had to admit that it felt good in his… fur? He sighed. The longer he was a rat, the more he did not really like it, though he was growing used to walking about as one.

Here too was peaceful overall, Matthias had to admit, and yet the contrast of the dark Crow was so incongruous with it that it was worse than meeting with him in a haunted graveyard or a ruin taken up by zombies. This place was very much alive and not in the mocking sort of way. He turned round to see if he could see the top of Big Marie, but the façade wall blocked his view of it. He felt disappointed somehow.

Higher up along the parapet were images carved into the stone, and more of that colored glass studded into portions at even intervals like the top of a crown. He knew there was sunlight beyond what he could see now because, pale though it was, it caught the glass diadems in emerald, cobalt, and crimson. The sunlight especially struck, to his surprise, a plain metal bucket sitting high on the furthest corner from where they stood, though closer to the actual doorway from the bell-ringer's staircase back down into the cathedral.

He turned to the Crow. "What are we doing out here?"

"We're going to ask Quisi-Toadelle about it," said the Crow.

"Quasi…total?" asked Matthias.

The Crow showed the way to another rope. At least he had the decency of not picking Matthias up by the tail again. Though, Matthias was not too keen on going to the top of the wall, and said so.

"Then take the parachute pack," said the Crow pointing to a corner lined with such packs as though they were inside a military airline carrier.

Matthias suddenly hoped that this was not a castle in the sky floating above the ground.

Why? He suddenly asked himself. Does it matter where you are visually? After all this time, you'd think you wouldn't care if you were the size of a gnat on the edge of a knife in the hand of a circus dagger-thrower.

"Spies must show their courage as well as submission," said the Crow.

Matthias sighed. Taking up a pack and throwing it onto his back, he scurried to the rope and used his rodent ability to climb to the top of the wall. He never did feel like he was scaling to where eagles dared. It was more like climbing up a climbing wall in gym glass for a nagging gym teacher.

The closer he came to the glass diadems, however, he cared less about the reason for his ascent. He felt that they were doorways, or at least more fragments of mirrors such as the ones found where he had left the White Rabbit and Adhikari. As he drew close enough to look into them, they did show images moving. This time his reflection was the rat's but he could see other people past his reflection quite easily once he told himself to ignore the way his whiskers trembled irately at the sight of himself.

It looked like the scene from a movie. There was a woman with long ash-blonde hair and a man who was short but strong. There was a third man behind them difficult to make out in the shallow vision through the emerald glass except that he was tall and older than the other two. What was of interest to Matthias most was that, though they did seem quite tense and working hard at some controls, the controls themselves were very familiar. Another thing of interest was how the trio floated about in a lack of any gravitational pull.

He knew this place. He knew the mechanical heart upon which they were attempting to operate. It was the Heart of Heartland, but who were these people?

Was this past, present, or future or something completely hypothetical? Perhaps he was in another dimension in the same physical space as they were. The one thing he did doubt was that it was a play or a movie. This was real in some fashion or another no matter how dizzying it was to the brain.

At least as real as anything in Wonderland or in an imagination could be, he quickly reminded himself.

Then there was a lurch that shook the inside of the glass emerald. It almost shook the emerald itself, and Matthias knew he could hear or feel the first beats. The Heart of Heartland was coming alive.

Matthias blinked in wide-mouthed awe as it chugged and churned and seemed to choke at first, but it worked through its rust and dust. It worked faster and cleaner like a steam engine having gained traction.

The woman and the younger man were congratulating each other. They kissed and embraced tightly; though when they parted they looked like they could not decide whether they liked each other that much or not or if they even cared in typical movie fashion.

Wrinkling his nose, Matthias shut his mouth and cocked his head in thought. Before he could think on this scene long, the sound of flapping almost made him lose his hold. The wing-beats were massive and daunting enough to surely be the wings of the Monstrous Crow of Carrollean lore, but Matthias only strove forward stubbornly.

"Yes, yes, come on, come on," insisted the deep-throated Crow, and he landed near the bucket.

This was where Matthias met him after a moment or two of scrambling.

"Do you know anything about the Heart of Heartland?" squeaked Matthias as he was catching his breath and leaning against merlon side inside the spacious crenel in which they were now situated.

The tops of the merlons were interchanged with swallowed tail forms and literal-barbed metal spikes and quatrefoils. Matthias found it interesting that this was neither Notre Dame nor a castle in the sky. Taking in the view, he was that it was more like the Island of Mont St. Michel at high tide from atop the uppermost tower. The whiney screams of gulls and shrikes glinting like whitecaps in the air were sucked along a cold wind sharper here than in the balcony. Holy streams of sunlight filtered through skillfully sculpted cloudy heavens more atmospherically artistic than the fine architecture in which he was now leaning.

"Quasi-toadelle might know something about it," said the Crow.

"What?" Matthias blinked back to the bulky black shape like a shadow of a slipper at the end of a bedroom bed, and he had a thought suddenly that the Crow was not as confident as his voice conveyed unless one calculated all confidence he possessed to laid upon this Quasi-toadelle.

For a moment, maybe it was the scent of the tide, Matthias was reminded of the Gryphon. Now this Crow did not look like it was half anything, and yet he seemed to fit the bill somehow, or rather the beak. He was more like the Gryphon than any monstrous black phoenix spreading a storm cloud upon a pair of naughty, pudgy, squabbling, sparring siblings.

"Come," said the Crow.

Matthias clicked the roof of his mouth as answer.

The Crow lifted Matthias up, though more gently this time in his talons. He fluttered and then gently set Matthias on top of the perch of a swallow tail merlon so that he could see inside of the bucket. He almost felt like he was being fed into a stone nest to a stone beak from the live one to be half-swallowed in this immovable mouth. There was no way to situate himself very solidly. He had to lie himself on the curve of one side of the sprouting stone tail and lean over to look into the bucket.

Quasi-Toadelle was a sad and miserable creature, though mostly she just looked very drowsy. The sunlight was still striking the outside of the metal pail; though none shone into it. From his perch, Matthias could feel the heat from the bucket radiating back at him, and if it were not for the breeze it would have been a bit stifling. The bucket felt no breeze at all, and there sat the creature who blinked lazily up at Matthias with a face that looked familiar.

Not that Matthias was in the habit of knowing toads, but then this was no toad.

"Mr. Pâté, this is Quasi-Toadelle," said the Crow.

"Good… afternoon?" said Matthias craning his neck with a gentle wave of his paw.

"Quasi-Toadelle," said the Crow. "If you're not too glum in there, I'd like to introduce you to Ratty Pâté. He is our new resident spy. A weasel of a rat, I've no doubt. The likes of which could steal from Notre Dame and never be noticed underfoot."

Quasi-Toadelle did not answer; though she was at least half-listening as far as Matthias could tell.

"Aren't you a frog?" Matthias asked after a moment of silence.

The creature in the bucket blinked as answer. She huddled into a boho-hoodie too large for her as though she was actually cold in there and snuggling into a blanket.

"Of course, she is a frog," retorted the Crow. "But it is so much easier to pun with toads than with frogs. You can say she is 'toadally content' or 'a lost toady of a slippery fish'. You could say she was 'toad behind a boat in this bucket before she was forced into teetoadalism as there's no teetoadum spin of a chance for such shine as all that'. She's toad the line for so long that she has nothing left to have toad herself."

"Do you need to pun with her at all?' asked Matthias feeling sorry for her despite himself. "Maybe it would be better if you took her out of the bucket so she would not slowly fry her brains out."

"Oh, no," said the Crow. "That would not do. She wants to be in there where she was put and I would not dare remove her."

"Even for her own good?" asked Matthias not withholding his annoyance. "Don't you know what happens to frogs in hot buckets?"

"I would not dare remove her," said the Crow after a pause of thought.

Matthias rolled his eyes.

"Once I wasn't a frog or a toad," said the voice of Quasi-Toadelle; it was slow and wheezing yet dreamy, almost hypnotic.

Matthias blinked.

"Once I was a princess," the false-toad finished.

"And the frog you kissed turned you into a frog?" asked Matthias despite himself.

Quasi-Toadelle sighed slow and pathetically. "No. I ran off with a prince of chaos from the salt, salt sea who could have married a princess for her crown but did not all for the love of me…"

Matthias thought a moment about what the Crow had said about her, past the general puns. "A fish? It wasn't… er…"

"He was a star, volatile but beautiful enough to blink at as a molten sun might or otherwise blind you. He was the sun of universal toadality… he was Betelgeuse and I a gothic moon to orbit his might. A planetoid to a planet. A Stilbon. 'What galaxies, what galaxies are those, my love?' I said to him when push came to shove, but I will more be seen as a wane moon where the woman wails for her demon lover, but I knew that I had the song of the Abyssianian maid."

Her face glinted slightly then with a bit more vigor, and Matthias now swiftly knew where he had seen it and quite recently. It was the face of the queen in the painting he had flipped over.

"Do you… believe in refrigerators?" Matthias asked unsure whether he wanted the answer or not. He could have asked about "fragments vaulted" or "caves of ice" or about those who might say "beware, beware" from the opium-inspired poem of Sam Coleridge that the sluggish creature was now referring too as though just as drugged from the other end, but somehow that appliance and the queen's portrait had taken precedent.

"Oh," said the once-queen quite regally despite her lethargy, "I do not need saving or to die to make a man stronger. I never did. I am never a damsel in distress. I was meant to save a god…" Her eyes glazed over again. "Meant to save a god. The suffering god… the Hatter of Hats, the emperor of…" Her eyes closed. "He… needs… me. I don't need him… he needs me… needs me… loves me… he promised… promised…prom… ohm… mmmph… … … …"

"Quasi-Toadelle?" asked Matthias.

"Mercury," whispered the toad.

Matthias jolted and almost hissed like a cat, but then rats do hiss too, he recalled.

"Mercury?" demanded Matthias. "You're part of the Pantheon. The one that…"

The one that he had been warned of? Well, at least the one that had done to him what he had just been cured of. The one who made him the Hatter for the false Wonderland. The one that…

"Why are you here?" he demanded.

Was she poisoning Esther with her mercury now?! What was she? Was she anymore a person than Nick Sardine? The Crow seemed to worship her. He was the toady to a toad, it seemed, and yet…