Hub - Issue 23 Read online

  I kiss my girl on the brow. “It’s just magic, Yinnie.”

  “Sure will make getting stuff up the river simple,” she says.

  *

  Far as I know, the only thing the augraam’s good for is training crows. Oh, every now and again I catch Yinnie doodling bugs with hers, making them jump or fly in circles or whatever comes into her head. They’re stupid, don’t need patterns to make them dance. But really, hexing bugs ain’t much use ‘less you can plain keep them away, and it takes too much

  energy to do that for more than a short while. Easier to just swat them when they buzz too close.

  Last year this time she tried to use her gift in the marshes to catch frogs, but frogs have bigger brains than bugs, and they got spooked when they felt her mental touch, just like baby crows do. Yinnie was sure disappointed. Yeah, frog legs is good eating, I said to her, but why waste a talent like the augraam on slimy things anyway? We only get frogs one season out of four, and nets scoop them up real well.

  It’s a kid’s normal need for mischief, I guess, and for testing limits. She plays with her power like another child might play with fire. I tried to tell her once that the gods made her for better things—for crowmastering—but even Ana laughed at that. “What do you know about the gods and their purposes?” she said.

  Not much maybe.

  But I do know what the augraam’s for, and what it ain’t. And what it’s for is crows.

  *

  Ana finally got fed up and loaded Yinnie into the carriage with her to go for supplies. They won’t get far. I tried to tell her the roads’re still too soft, but she goes deaf on me when

  I’m saying something she don’t want to hear. I s’pect she’ll be sending Yinnie back for me any time now to come get them unstuck.

  Meantime, I plan to sit back on this deck I built with her husband a few years back and load some ditchweed into my pipe for a good smoke. When she’s around she don’t let me smoke in the house, or the barn, or the rookery or, come right to it, anywhere under the great blue sky, so I got to sneak in a few puffs when I can. Not that she don’t always know. The woman’s got a better nose than the mayor’s old bluehound, and that dog can sniff a fly’s breath from here to the other side of the Glan. Ana smells it in my clothes, my hair, on my breath ... I swear I could strip myself naked and lay in a pool with only my mouth and pipe above water, and she’d smell it on me. Shit, I could swallow a mouthful of rotting garlic cloves mixed with vinegar and grol, and she’d still smell it! Thing is, Ana likes being a momma so much, she thinks she ought to do it in both directions.

  I light my pipe with a thing called a flintstick. Ain’t really flint, just some chemical on the end of a little stick. When you scrape the end against something rough, up pops a small flame. These things’re all the rage right now in town, and I got to admit, they’re real handy. I mean, sometimes “new” is “better;” all I’m saying’s that the one don’t necessarily follow the other. I suck sweet smoke down into my throat and let it sit there, tingling and burning till I can’t hold my breath no more, then blow O’s real slow out my mouth. It’s a clear afternoon early in our season of stinking-hot, and the sun’s out on the Tombs, and just for this quiet moment everything’s all right in the world.

  *

  When I’m wrong, I admit it. No sense standing on pride when the facts’re against you. Ana had me believing the carriage didn’t get stuck. I was all ready to apologize for not going for supplies first time she told me to—and would’ve, too, ‘cept Yinnie told me they did get stuck, and more than once. Had to have the peat man next place over pry the wheels loose. He ended up riding into town with them, listening the whole way, I’m sure, to Ana’s favorite song: what a burden her father is, what an irresponsible old bastard. Ana made Yinnie promise not to say anything, but soon as she had a chance she blabbed it all. Her momma wanted to paddle her right there, but I said we don’t punish people for telling the truth ‘round here, and you ought to know that better’n anyone.

  “But we punish them for lying,” she said. “You’ve been smoking again.”

  “Well, then, no supper for me tonight.”

  “What a disgraceful example you are to your own granddaughter.”

  Ain’t it funny how she can turn it around so fast? She’s caught bare-ass lying, and I’m the one getting yelled at.

  “You can have my supper, Grandah,” Yinnie says.

  “Neither of you will get supper tonight, thank you very much.” Ana fluffs up her apron like an angry crow and stomps out of the room. Takes Yinnie and me about two blinks before we’re howling on the floor. Ana hates our giggle times, ‘cause she just can’t figure how her father and her daughter can get along so well, with her in the middle, not knowing how to connect with either one. Must be hard being on the outside of laughter. More’n anything, I’m guessing, it’s the augraam brings me and Yinnie so close. Nothing we can do about that. The “Gift of Knowing” don’t always skip generations, but it did this

  time, and Ana’s the one left out. And her with her husband dead.

  She cries a lot, when she thinks no one can hear.

  “Grandah,” Yinnie says, “there’s a big celebration in town tomorrow.”

  “Oh?”

  “Momma don’t want us to go, but we got to, Grandah, we got to!”

  “And why’s that?”

  “‘Cause a government man from Bylar’s gonna give some talk, which, who cares, you know? but guess what?” She’s so excited, she’s bouncing back and forth from one

  foot to the other, like her bladder’s about to bust.

  “I s’pose you’re gonna tell me ...”

  “He’s coming in a steamsailer! Really and truly, Grandah, a steamsailer! With an engine and a pro-pell-er and everything! I told you they were real!”

  I tousle her hair. I squeeze her shoulder. I smile my best happy smile.

  Well, shit.

  *

  Hello.

  Syba cocks his head at me and stares like only a crow can. In the gaslamp his

  eyes really sparkle. Then all the boys start in with their racket. Sometimes when they think it’s feeding time, it really is feeding time. I scoop out a cupful of seed for each cage, then as a special treat add a cube of fresh chicken meat. They don’t know they’re

  eating their cousins, but I don’t s’pose it’d matter to them if they did.

  I’m a crowmaster, yet the old government in Hoxa never did give me a breeding license. I have to buy my birds like any common hobbyist, and that’s what gets under my skin. ‘Course, that means only males. Not that I’m complaining, I always get my pick of the best ones. Still, maybe the new government in Bylar’ll issue me a license. I’ll talk to the o-fficial mouth-man in Chamal tonight. Might be there’s nothing he can do, but won’t hurt to look into it.

  I save Syba for last. The other birds gobble down the chicken first, then start pecking away at the seed. Syba, though, today he’s patient. I open his cage and, without being asked, he steps onto my arm, real gentle, like he knows I’m not wearing the glove.

  When I scratch the small feathers at the top of his head, he sort of coos and arches his

  neck in approval.

  “Come on,” I say. We go outside, me and Syba, and together we wait for the sun. So quiet this time of day, Ana and Yinnie asleep, just the crickets and the songbirds, fading stars and dark leaning toward light.

  Syba hops up onto my shoulder and nuzzles my cheek with his beak.

  “Been a good long time, ain’t it, old fellow?”

  Right up next to my ear, like a lover’s whisper, he goes, Hello.

  *

  I could talk about all the hollering and smells and pushing, the drinking and eating

  and carrying on, the music and flags and colors; or I could wonder how five thousand

  people somehow squeezed themselves into a town that holds two hundred. Not to mention

  the horses and carriages and stalls full of useless junk for sa
le.

  I could talk about the flaming fight I had with Ana to even let Yinnie go to town tonight. I could talk about all that, but thing is, Yinnie and I did come, and Ana, too, just to spite us, and we elbowed through all the people, and now we stand on the shore of the Korcen and get our first look at this steamsailer. Don’t know what I expected, but really it looks ‘bout like any other small sailing boat, ‘cept on top it’s got a ... chimney, I guess you’d call it, sticking out between the two little masts. No doubt what it burns; thick, smelly coal smoke blackens the furled sails. Well, coal ain’t steam—Yinnie’s confused by this, too—so I ask the mayor if maybe me and her and Ana can go down below and have a look at the engine. The mouth-man ain’t scheduled to speak for some time yet,

  and after all, even a crowmaster in Finchlan Glan commands some respect, so the mayor

  introduces us to the captain, and the captain takes us down to the engine room.

  Yinnie chatters so much I have to clamp my hand over her mouth. “This is so-o-o exciting, Grandah—”

  “Shh. I know.”

  First thing I notice is the two men shoveling coal. “Firemen,” the captain calls them. They’re as dirty and sweaty as peat cutters, and they cough like someone’s standing on their chest. Above the fire there’s a boiler, and then there’s “pistons” and “valves,” and gods know what else. All the while the floor of the boat vibrates like, well,

  like nothing I’ve ever felt, but it’s kind of pleasant. “The fire heats the boiler,” the captain says, “and that’s what creates the steam that makes the whole thing work.”

  Ana crinkles up her nose to show her distaste.

  “I want to see the pro-pel-ler,” Yinnie says. After all of the build-up, I think she’s

  disappointed in the actual truth of the steamsailer.

  “That’s under the boat, honey,” the captain says. “You can’t see it.”

  “This ain’t magic, Grandah,” she says.

  “No, I s’pose not.”

  “But,” the captain says, and he’s smiling like what he’s about to say will please me, “this boat can make the trip up the Korcen from Sorl in less than a day, a lot faster than any wagon caravan or barge. It means prices on your goods should come down.

  And it means same-day delivery of the mail.”

  “The mail?” Ana says, and her eyes flash the first twinkle of interest I seen in her in a long while.

  “Yes, Missus. We got a bag of it in the pilot house. Cheaper than couriers and

  more efficient than crows, eh?” And he claps me on the back, friendly as can be.

  Yinnie tugs on my sleeve. “Grandah, what about our augraam?”

  I focus my mind on the boiler, the pistons, the valves. I look for a pattern, a wild grid I can align and put in order. But there ain’t no grid, no pattern at all, just a flat and empty ... nothing. This engine, this steamsailer, has not even the soul of a bird.

  I wonder, if I was to lay down in a peat bog, if some future cutters would pull me out, a year or a century from now, skin tanned to black by the acid, what would they think? Would they think, well, ain’t this the happiest corpse we ever saw? Or would they say, here’s a man who did not go grinning to his death?

  And yet I do smile, for the captain, for Ana, and for Yinnie. Here in the belly of the beast that’s gonna swallow up my life’s work, I smile.

  Grandah, what about our augraam?

  I pick Yinnie up, hold her in my arms. She’s my heir, my heritage, and my hope. I had one gift to leave her, one. What’ll I give her now, when having the augraam’s no better’n not having it? I kiss her cheek.

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  Ana sure looks tickled, though. No, she ain’t being mean. Just that, without the need for me and Yinnie’s special talent, everyone in the house’ll be the same. Maybe she thinks she won’t have to be so sad now, ‘cause at last she can bond with her girl like other mommas do.

  I set Yinnie down. Ana takes her hand and says, real gentle, “I know.”

  Reviews

  Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal reviewed by Paul Kane

  The Servants reviewed by Marie O’Regan

  Dead Men’s Boots reviewed by Lee Harris

  Labyrinth: 21st Anniversary Edition

  Starring: Jennifer Connolly, David Bowie, Toby Froud

  Directed by: Jim Henson

  Sony DVD (2 disc) £10.99

  After finishing the mammoth task of working on The Dark Crystal, and after saying they would never do anything like it again, director Jim Henson and conceptual designer Brian Froud promptly began work on yet another big puppet production. The difference was this time they’d be mixing actors with the puppets and adding more humour and music to the mix. The key idea would be goblins, and they would be ruled over by a goblin king. Although others were considered for the part (as hard as it is to believe, Michael Jackson was in the running!) that particular role went to David Bowie and the rest, as they say, is movie history. Incredibly, Labyrinth is now celebrating its 21st birthday – how time flies – so what better way to get all nostalgic and introduce a new generation to the magic than with a brand new two-disc DVD set?

  We begin the film with teenager Sarah (Connelly, fresh from mucking around with creepy crawlies in Dario Argento’s Phenomenon) trying to learn lines from her favourite book, Labyrinth. Realising she’s late to look after her baby brother, Toby (Froud’s real son, Toby), she runs back home in the rain only to get a chewing out from her step mother (well, there had to be one – it’s a fairy tale, after all) before she leaves with Sarah’s father for the night. In a mood, and annoyed by Toby’s crying Sarah wishes that the goblins would take him away, just like in her book. Little does she know that the goblins are listening in, and do exactly that.

  Jareth the Goblin King (Bowie) appears to her and says that Toby is now in his castle. If she wants him back she has only 13 hours to make it through the labyrinth. It’s not as easy as it sounds. This particular puzzle makes Hampton Court Maze look easy by comparison. Sarah has to contend with not only shifting walls, talking doorknockers and trap doors, but peaches that make her forget when she eats them and the dreaded Bog of Eternal Stench. Luckily she picks up a few friends along the way, beginning with the dwarf Hoggle – who is being manipulated by Jareth, but comes good in the end – the gigantic furry orange creature called Ludo with the power to control rocks, and a swashbuckling dog creature called Sir Didymus. With time running out and the goblin army still to face, will Sarah make it to the castle on time, or will Toby remain with the goblins forever.

  In one of the documentaries for this release Jim Henson’s son, Brian, comments: ‘As much as dad loved The Dark Crystal, I think he needed a bit of the absurd back.’ And let’s face it, creatures called The Fireys who dance around and take their heads off, talking worms wearing scarves, a wiseman wearing a chicken hat (voiced by Michael Horden – the wise man, not the chicken), and goblins dancing with a baby while David Bowie sings definitely qualifies. Labyrinth has a charm all of its own, and in spite of not doing brilliantly at the box office has built up a much deserved cult following over the years – so much so that there’s a ton of merchandise now available, plus a Manga-style sequel which takes place years after the movie.

  There are so many standout moments it would take several reviews to list them all but here are a few highlights for me: the hands in the shaft which Sarah falls through (‘We are helping hands!’); the warning walls (‘Oh please, I haven’t said it for such a long time…That way leads to certain doom!’); and the finale in Jareth’s Escher inspired palace. New additions to the set include a Froud commentary, in which he reveals how his first instinct is to pick up the crying Toby even though it’s only a film (and actually we see the grown up version 20 years on in the documentaries section), there’s the original Inside the Labyrinth in which we discover that one of the choreographers was Star Trek: TNG’s Gates McFadden (previously called Cheryl), plus up to date documentaries like King
dom of Characters and The Quest for Goblin City (the only thing missing in these are reflections from Bowie and Terry Jones – although might that be because the latter maintains little after Sarah eating the peach is his work – but we do get executive producer George Lucas). Add to this galleries, behind the scenes pictures and storyboards and you have a nice celebratory package.

  You enjoyed it as a kid, so sit back now and enjoy it with your own.

  The Dark Crystal: 25th Anniversary

  Starring (voices): Stephen Garlick, Lisa Maxwell, Billie Whitelaw

  Directed by: Jim Henson and Frank Oz

  Sony DVD (2 disc) £10.99

  Released back in 1982, this was a film like no other. Unlike previous Henson creations The Muppets, The Dark Crystal was a concerted attempt to do something just a bit more serious with puppetry, drawing on sources like The Lord of the Rings to tell a mythical – and magical – quest tale where all the main characters are being worked by five or six puppeteers. Based on the concept designs of Brian Froud, the creatures that inhabit this world are by turns bizarre and oddly recognisable, with Henson and Oz throwing everything in here from witches who study astronomy to swamps inhabited by giant toads.

  The basic storyline revolves around an old prophecy, concerned with healing a powerful crystal. A thousand years ago when there was a conjunction of the planets, the crystal was cracked, creating a new dark era. A shard broke off, turning it into a Dark Crystal and creating two new races: the evil Skekses and the gentle Ur-ru (essentially two sides of the same coin). Other races exist on this faraway planet, like the tiny podlings and the all-but extinct and Hobbit-like Gelflings, like our hero Jen (Garlick – but puppeteered by Henson himself. His quest begins with the death of his master, one of the Ur-ru, who in his dying breath tells Jen to seek out the shard because a second conjunction is imminent. If the crystal cannot be healed by then, the Skekses will rule the planet forever.