12. The Impossible Appointment
In which there is no time for discussion…
@ChristmasStars had found the envelope propped against the tea urn, addressed in a hand nobody needed to be told belonged to Fenella Burnish, the letters upright and evenly spaced in a way that suggested a ruler had been involved at some stage, if not in the writing itself then in the thinking behind it.
She opened it the way she opened everything now, standing, in full view of the room, because the last one had drawn a crowd before she’d got past the second line and there seemed little point pretending this one wouldn’t.
It did not take long to read.
“Well,” she said. “That’s short.” And she read it aloud, exactly as it was written.
Your letter was constructed with considerable skill and effort. I should like to see the artist. My workshop, Wicken Fen, in ninety minutes’ time. Bring the mapmaker too. The flower was a lovely touch.
There was a silence of the kind that generally preceded a great deal of noise.
Christmas Stars finished reading and lowered the letter. There was a pause before anyone found the correct word to seize on.
“Considerable skill,” said Girdle, trying it out.
“And effort,” said Gimbal. “Considerable effort. That’s two considerables.”
“Is that allowed?” said Girdle. “In the same letter?”
“It’s not a rule,” said Gimbal. “I’m just saying she noticed enough to say it twice.”
Griffin had already got to her feet. “The map,” she said, to no one in particular, then, when no one in particular replied, to everyone. “She’s talking about the map. Considerable skill. That’s the map.”
“She’s talking about the whole thing,” said Girdle.
“She is talking about the whole thing,” Griffin agreed, “which includes the map.”
Gimbal was nodding slowly, with the air of someone arriving at a conclusion she had privately reached some time ago. “I said the flower mattered. Do you remember me saying that? When I put it in the corner, I said, this will matter.”
“You said it was pretty.”
“I said it would matter, and now look.”
At the window, Graphic had gone the particular shade of pink that her fur went when there was nowhere else for it to go, and had become extremely interested in refolding the letter’s envelope along its existing creases, smoothing each one flat with rather more attention than the task required.
“Ninety minutes,” said Girdle, for the third time, to nobody who had asked. “That’s not very long. Is that very long?”
“It’s ninety minutes,” said Gimbal, unhelpfully.
Nobody appeared to be counting it as urgently as Girdle wanted them to. Gasket had already produced a small case from somewhere behind the bar, the kind kept for occasions rather than daily use, and was packing it with a briskness that suggested she had been waiting some time for a reason to use it. A clean cloth for the hands. A second clean cloth in case the first one wasn’t clean enough by the time they arrived. A comb, though nobody present had ever seen Graphic use one.
“She doesn’t need a comb,” said Girdle. “She needs to leave. Ninety minutes.”
“You can’t meet a glazier looking however you like,” said Gasket, adding the comb regardless.
“Ninety minutes,” said Girdle.
Griffin arrived from the direction of the stairs already dressed for travel, in a manner nobody had asked her to be, and announced that she would be going too, since a mapmaker’s work being discussed generally required the mapmaker to be present to discuss it, and it would hardly do for Graphic to answer for both of them.
Gimbal arrived shortly after, also dressed for travel, and announced that she would be coming too, on account of the flower.
Nobody argued with this, mostly because nobody had the time to.
“Ninety minutes,” said Girdle.
Graphic, through all of it, stood very still in the middle of the room while the case was packed around her, still faintly pink, saying nothing, occasionally glancing toward the door as though checking it hadn’t moved.
“Ninety minutes,” said Girdle again, checking the clock on the wall as if it might have changed its mind since she’d last looked.
Griffin checked the clock. “Eleven minutes,” she said. “We should go.”
Gosie and @Hedgehogforshort pulled into the yard at Fenhurst and Rhys’ workshop in Wicken Fen with two minutes to spare. Graphic, Griffin, Gimbal and the small ceremonial case were standing by the workshop door, as though they had been waiting some while and had simply declined to look impatient about it.
The door was answered, as it had been the first time, by the harried hamster apprentice with the clipboard, though this time the clipboard appeared to be expecting them, since she looked at it, then at the five of them, then back at it, with something close to disappointment.
“Do you have an appointment?”
“Yes,” said Gosie.
The apprentice looked faintly wrongfooted by this, as though the question had been asked for its own sake for so long that an actual answer had stopped being anticipated. She consulted the clipboard again, more carefully this time. “Name?”
“Gosie.”
“There’s one appointment,” said the apprentice, looking from Gosie to Hedgehog to Griffin to Graphic to Gimbal and back again, “and there are five of you.”
“Yes,” said Gosie, offering no explanation.
“She’s expecting you,” the hamster said, as though this fact displeased her personally. “Through the workshop. Don’t touch anything on the benches.”
The north light fell flat and even across the workshop as Fenella Burnish turned towards them, and it was as though someone had struck a match. For exactly one moment, the light caught the fiery plumage of an actual flame bowerbird revealing every improbable shade of orange and red at once, before she furled her wings and stepped forward to greet them.
“You made it,” she said.
https://myrtlelion.substack.com/p/12-the-impossible-appointment