In case any one of you are perusing the computer tomorrow (or today, rather, it's being 12:01 a.m.) after having eaten a rather large Thanksgiving dinner, and you're looking for something that won't take a lot of jaw to chew and will give you a breezy, smiley, nonsensical feeling, I have provided something I hope will fit the bill. It's the first chapter of
Cottleston Pie. (a short story in its own right.) I've decided I'm giving it to Gracie for Christmas, so in between editing the other projects, I'm scribbling nonsense like a mad-woman. I've been collecting bits of pieces of Grace-lingo to use within the book, as well as many nonsense-scraps from my own mind, including tantalizing words full of promise like "Ruby Elixir" and "Skellingtons" and "Fourfin-July" among others. Oh yes. Bits about being clever enough to find the Big Dipper anywhere....messenger pigeons...This is going to be so much fun to write. I hope you enjoy the first chapter and have a smashing Thanksgiving Day.
Cottleston Pie
A
Bit of Nonsense by Rachel Heffington
Chapter One: Who’s Master?
***
Simpian Grenadine was a little
boy. That was what he looked like;
but if anyone asked him such a question pretty nearly any given day, he would
stick one hand on his hip, hold the other out like a pistol, and say in a
terrible voice:
“I’m a pirate.” Which he Was some
days, and Was Not, others.
Simpian lived in a house perched
in a tree, simply because that is the best place to live. (As anyone who has
tried it ought to agree.) He lived by himself as far as anyone could tell. He
had no father or mother or sisters or brothers and certainly no uncles or
aunts. That is, until tea-time. Then you might find Simpian rummaged out of his
tree house by the sound of the great brass bell and if you followed him across
Waterloo and through The Field (and once or thrice around and through and
behind the blueberry bushes) you might hear quite a lot of people calling him
“Allister!”—or more often than not—“Come Allister!” and he might look less and
less like a pirate and more and more like a grubby-little-chap-in-need-of-washing
whose relatives were looking for him.
But no one ever did follow Simpian Grenadine in that
direction, because anything and everything of importance that happened to him
happened at Cottleston Pie.
“What’s Cottleston Pie?”
Now, now, don’t interrupt. If you
keep interrupting me to ask about Cottleston Pie I shall have to tell you to
play the ice-cube game and freeze, and since Simpian hated That Sort of game,
we had better not play it.
Cottleston Pie was the name of
Simpian’s tree house, and his whole Property, in fact.
“Why?”
Well, it came about in this way:
Once, when Simpian was not a pirate, nor Simpian, but Only Allister, his sister
had been reading to him a funny sort of book all about a bear named Pooh and
all of Pooh’s friends, and they came across a sort of riddle in the book. It
was all about flies that couldn’t bird and birds that couldn’t fly, and
cottleston, cottleston, cottleston pie. And because it sounded Difficult and Smart,
Allister adopted the rhyme as his own and carted it around with him everywhere.
He said it to the cows at milking
time and to the crows in the Rickety Pines, and to the butterflies that lived
near his Property. It was during one conversation with these self-same butterflies
that Allister discovered what his Property was called.
“Butterfly-or-Flies,” (That was
how Allister had named the pretty things—he was never quite sure whether there
were many of the insects or only one very active one, and so as not to offend
them all on one hand—or It, on the other—he had devised this rather clever
title for the creature in general.) “Butterfly-or-Flies, I have a riddle for
you.”
The yellow and black insect did
not appear to be much interested in Allister’s riddle and instead began to
breakfast on the buttercups growing round. “So you will not guess?” Allister
asked, much disappointed.
It would not.
“Then I’ll tell you. ‘Cottleston,
cottleston, cottleston pie. A fly can’t bird, and a bird can’t fly. Ask me a
riddle and I’ll reply: cottleston, cottleston, cottleston pie.”
Butterfly-or-Flies finished his
breakfast at one flower and wobbled to the next in a drunken fashion. There was
no fun in that. Allister flipped onto his back in the grass and looked up into
the branches of his tree. The sun shone yellow through the green leaves and
blue behind that, and Allister whispered his rhyme to himself in a sing-song
voice: “Cottleston, cottleston, cottleston pie….” And just like that—without
even trying—the words had attached themselves to the tree and the house and
Allister sat up, a deal surprised, and half expecting to see a Notice written
up and tacked to the tree:
“Notice:
Formerly known as Tree-House Belonging To
Allister, now known as Cottleston Pie: Home of Simpian Grenadine.”
The last bit surprised Allister
more than finding that his house had named itself. What sort of a name was
Simpian Grenadine? A good one, he thought. But where had it come from? Nowhere,
he supposed. And because Allister was clever enough to know that the best thing
always come from Nowhere, he didn’t bother to ask any further questions and
only said to himself once or twice as if trying on a new jacket: “Simpian
Grenadine…master of Cottleston Pie.”
So that is how Cottleston Pie
came to be. It was a good name because it was a tad secret; no one knew what
Allister meant when he said it—they all thought he was quoting Pooh. But he
wasn’t. And of course no one could guess that he wasn’t Allister anymore—he was
Simpian Grenadine: Master of Cottleston Pie. Yes, it was a satisfying
arrangement.
The morning of Simpian’s first
adventure began golden, hazy, and sneeze-ish. You would never have guessed
today would be the adventurous sort—it was rather more dull than usual, truth
be told. Simpian lay on a branch of his tree with his arms and legs stuck out
on either side so that he much resembled a tiger-rug let to air on a
fence-rail. He was thinking and sneezing this morning—thinking of lots of
things; many important things, and many Not So, and he was sneezing because the
goldenrod was blooming in a brilliant patch hard by. But the most important
thing Simpian thought of was Nothing. Simpian thought more and more on Nothing
as the sun rose higher and the cicadas buzzed drowsier. Nothing was a very comfortable
sort of occupation and felt…well…almost sleepy.
But Simpian was not sleeping. He
was thinking of Nothing with his eyes closed.
“That’s almost the same thing,” a
voice said. It was a near voice, not a far voice like the ones you usually hear
when you’ve been not-sleeping.
Simpian was so surprised to hear
anyone that he had to hug the tree-limb tight so as not to appear to be
falling. “What’s almost the same thing?” he asked the voice.
“Sleeping, and thinking of
Nothing with your eyes closed.”
“What would you know about it?”
“Because I’ve tried it—I’ve tried
it and I’ve fallen asleep every time.”
“Well that—Achoo!—is you.” Simpian was growing cross. It was
not pleasant to talk to [and what’s more, to be contradicted by] someone you
could not see. “Come out here and show yourself if you’re going to be smart.”
“Thank you. I am.”
Simpian sat up and flicked a
wandering ant off his elbow. “You’re coming out, or you’re smart?”
“Both, I should think,” the voice
said.
Being in a tree when something
invisible and impertinent was on the ground felt too much like giving up.
Simpian wriggled off his branch and down the tree till his toes brushed the
grass. That was much better. Now he could meet the whatever-it-was in good
style. But there was nothing at all in or around Cottleston Pie. Nothing, at
least, that Simpian could see.
“Where are you, voice?”
“I’m coming, I’m coming. You
needn’t be so hasty.” And following the voice was a pretty, wild, little rabbit
with a pink nose and long whiskers.
“You?” Simpian asked. He was not
a little disappointed to see it was only a rabbit after all. He had grand
thoughts of the voice belonging to something threatening—another pirate,
perhaps. But you couldn’t have a swordfight with a rabbit. That much was
certain. He sneezed once—a cross between indignation and goldenrod—and glared
at the owner of the voice. “What are you doing here?”
“I have as much right to be here
as you, I daresay.”
Simpian drew himself high and
looked past the rabbit—he did not want to notice that it was a rather adorable
little creature. “You have not. Because you don’t even know who I am.”
“Who are you?” the rabbit asked.
“I am the master of this
Property,” Simpian said.
“What property?” The rabbit
twitched one of her long ears and licked her forepaw.
What property? Simpian felt
crosser than ever. What property? Next, that saucy little rabbit would be
telling him that Cottleston Pie was a ridiculous name and he ought to have
called it The Tree House or something sensible. Well then—Simpian wouldn’t tell
the rabbit What Property. He’d make her guess. “Yes, what property?” Simpian
asked.
“What do you mean by asking ‘what
property’ when I asked you first?” the rabbit asked. Her fur was very soft
looking.
“Well, I asked you second.”
“That makes no sense.”
“Yes it does.”
“No it doesn’t.” The rabbit said.
“Doesn’t it?”
“What do you mean?”
“What do you mean?”
Simpian laughed inside to see
that the rabbit’s fat little sides were moving in and out quickly as if all the
arguing had left her breathless.
But the rabbit drew herself up
onto her hind legs and smoothed back her ears with one paw. “I mean to tell you that I am planning to
live here by and by.”
This took Simpian by surprise,
and he fell over backward into the grass and had to suck on his thumb for a
moment. Simpian never sucked his thumb—well, almost never. Only when he forgot
that he was six years old and not Allister anymore. Yes, Simpian was very
surprised at what the rabbit said. Why was he surprised, and vexed and Not a
Little Astonished? Well, how would you feel if you’d just been drowsing and
thinking of Nothing and having an all-round good time and a rabbit came up and
told you that she was planning on moving in with you?
You would likely feel crosser
than Simpian did, for he was always
up for some adventure or other. That is why it did not take him a very long
time to recover. He was on his feet in a moment, drying off his thumb on his
corduroy pants and wiggling his toes in the grass. “Rabbit,” he said. “Oh,
Rabbit.”
“Yes?”
“What is your name?”
“Your
name isn’t Cottontail?”
“No.”
Simpian
was silent for a moment. Her name ought
to be Cottontail, because Cottontail sounded very good when matched up with
Cottleston Pie, and if his plan was to work at all, it must sound right. But
Sylvi was not such a bad name after he thought about it for a moment or two.
“Sylvi, do you like Presenti-mints?”
“I’ve
never had one. Are they good to eat?”
Simpian shook his head. Imagine
anyone thinking a Presenti-mint was something to eat. Why, he’d known for three
days that a Presenti-mint was what he used to call A Feeling. He crossed his
fingers and rocked on his toes while explaining to the rabbit: “A Presenti-mint
is when you thinking something is going to happen.”
“Well, do you?”
“Do I what?”
“Think something is going to happen?”
“Let me do all the asking, Sylvi. I’m master of this Property.”
Sylvi hunched up until she looked
softer than ever. “That’s where we started the conversation.”
Simpian crossed his arms and
shook his head at the rabbit. “If you’d let me tell you you’d understand. I do
thinking something is going to happen. You know what I think will happen?”
“I can’t imagine.”
“Well I can. I think we can live at Cottleston Pie together.”
“What is Cottleston Pie?”
What a dense rabbit this was. He
wondered if all cottontails also had cotton-brains but then he thought that
perhaps it wasn’t fair to expect something that looked cute to also be able to
think. Instead, Simpian turned a cartwheel in the grass overtop Sylvi and ended
up on the other side of her. She didn’t have to turn, however, because all
rabbits have eyes on either side of their heads. The problem would have been in
Simpian had landed right in front of her nose. He was right-side up again, and
stretched his arms over his head. “Cottleston Pie is my Property. And I—”
“Yes, who are you?” Sylvi interrupted.
This was not how the conversation
was supposed to go. Simpian bit his lip and whacked the top off a dandelion.
Its fluff went sailing away on a fitful breeze that started up as if the earth
was yawning. “I am Simpian Grenadine.”
“Oh,” the rabbit said. “Why
didn’t you say so? If I had known you were the
Simpian Grenadine I’d have not bothered to speak with you.”
This comment nettled Simpian
greatly. What did that strange rabbit mean by ‘if she’d have known?’ And did it
come out to a compliment? This was the largest point Simpian had to settle
within himself, and he answered quickly enough—it was only Great people who
could make people speak or not speak with oneself. Therefore there must be some
sort of compliment tucked away in Sylvi’s pronouncement like the lone raisin
Tottles hid in the king cake at Christmastime. Simpian plucked the compliment
out and popped it in his mouth by way of a smug smile. “Well, are you or aren’t
you?” he asked.
Sylvi stared at him out of one
round boot-button eye, then swiveled her head so she looked at him out of the
other. “I am’nt.”
“You whatn’t?”
“I amn’t.”
“Ah. That’s what I thought you
said.”
Sylvi narrowed her eye. “That
means I am not.”
“I knew that,” Simpian hastened
to say. “Only I wanted to be sure you
knew what it meant.”
“Oh, I know.” And Sylvi began to groom her tawny fur again. She paused
mid-brush and looked up at him. “You are a perfect basket of red-herrings,
aren’t you?”
Simpian didn’t think he was much
like a basket of herrings at all, but there seemed to be nothing else to say
after this. Instead, he knocked the heads off another patch of dandelions and
sneezed once—or was it twice?—and generally tried not to look as if he wished
Sylvi would move off and leave him and Cottleston Pie alone. He tried counting
to five-and-twenty but got befogged by seventeen. This was no good either, for
Simpian had an absurd feeling that that uncanny Sylvi was most likely
a…whaddya-call-it….a math’gician and
could count to five-and-thirty if she
had a mind to. “Oh, Rabbit,” he said at last.
“What, Boy?”
Boy? How rude. “My name is Simpian
Grenadine, you know.”
“And mine is Sylvi, but you
called me Rabbit.”
She had a point. Simpian let the
subject lie. “Are you going to be leaving pretty soon?”
“No.” Sylvi nestled into the
grass and yawned a little yawn that showed her two white teeth.
“No?”
“No. You’ll be leaving pretty soon.”
“Oh.” Afterward Simpian wished
he’d said, “Aha,” which sounded a bit more like a pirate and less like Sulking.
But he only said, ‘Oh,’ and nothing else in Cottleston Pie spoke after him.
Butterfly-or-Flies zig-zagged by and Simpian wished he was as free as him to do
what he pleased. Sylvi curled up in a ball in her plush patch of grass—The Soft
Patch, Simpian noticed—and covered her nose and eyes with her paws.
Simpian sneaked off and climbed
his tree so that he could think of a plan. Usually he was rather good at coming
up with plans. Plans for picnics and plans for wanderings…plans for how to
divide up the rest of Tottles’ gingerbread, and how the sky would look best if
there were stars out in the daytime…but he felt all the planning spirit ebb out
of him as he looked at Sylvi sleeping in the grass and wondered how to make her
leave Cottleston Pie.
It was not till Simpian had eaten
the last of his gingerbread that he thought of it. Snakes. Every rabbit hates snakes—that’s as much a fact of life as
the one that snowflakes don’t come in August, and a tickle means laughing. And
the harder Simpian thought about snakes the more he wished he could find one
and coax it to live at Cottleston Pie with him to keep away any rabbits.
“Because,” he thought, “If Snakes
mean no rabbits, I won’t have to leave Cottleston Pie.”
So that is why Simpian scooted
down the tree-trunk and tip-toed around the Soft Patch with Sylvi in it, hoping
to get away without her noticing. It really seemed he had, and that Sylvi might
stay asleep, when her small, regal voice stopped him.
“Where are you going?”
“Nowhere.”
“Yes you are.”
“Fine—Somewhere.”
“I want to go Somewhere.”
Simpian bit his lip and tried not
to feel like kicking that small fluff-ball. “You can go Somewhere, but not my Somewhere.”
“If you don’t tell me where your
Somewhere is, how will I know not to go there?”
This vexed Simpian greatly, for
he was not certain where he’d be able to find his Snakes, and it was not a
pleasant idea, having to explain things to Sylvi. “If I go away, you’ll be able
to sleep,” Simpian said. He held his breath and waited for Sylvi to answer.
“No thank you—I’ve done with my
nap.” And like that, Sylvi hopped over to Simpian, sat back on her hind legs,
and squinted her eyes at him to see if
he was coming along. Simpian hummed a growling-tune to himself and poked his
nose into the air and stalked off, Sylvi coming lippity-lip behind him. They
walked for some time around Cottleston Pie, but Simpian felt foolish for poking
through the bushes with Sylvi looking on. She said nothing, but she was there
all the same and it made Simpian cross.
“Why do you have to follow me?”
“Because you’re on my property.”
“Your property?” Simpian asked,
astonished.
“Yes—Cottleston Pie, remember?”
Simpian snorted—a very cross
noise—and sucked his bottom lip. “Sylvi? What d’you say to a game of
hide-and-sneak?”
“Hide-and-sneak? Well, only if I
get to do the sneaking.”
Simpian was just a little
surprised that Sylvi knew how to play hide-and-sneak which was quite a
different game than hide-and-seek.
The difference began with how you said it. You hunched your shoulders forward—sneaky-ish
if ever anything was sneaky—and placed great emphasis on the Hiding part. “Hide-and-sneak.” The sneak was almost a
whisper by the time you go to it.
Regardless, Sylvi did seem to know how to play, so Simpian
hunched his shoulders forward again and narrowed his eyes till he could barely
see anything at all of the rabbit. “All right, Sylvi. You get to be the
Sneaker.” And saying “Sneak” reminded Simpian so much of “Snakes” that he gave
a little rabbitty wriggle himself and laughed inside with a feeling like
peppermints.
“Shall I be blind-folded?” Sylvi
asked.
“Of course you shall. But what
can we use?” Just then Simpian happened to look up and notice just how long and
soft Sylvi’s ears looked. “We’ll use your ears!”
“My ears?”
“ ‘Course—ears are first-rate
blind-folds.” Not only would they keep from slipping down and around her neck,
but if Sylvi tried to tug at the knot and peek to see where he was going, it
would hurt like awfulness.
“But you can’t use my ears—I won’t
allow you. I won’t let you. I won’t permit it.”
“I won’t permitit you!” Simpian growled, stalking toward
her. Afterward he was never sure if that had been the proper thing to say.
Either way, Sylvi seemed rather cowed by this, and let Simpian tie her long,
velvet-soft ears into a capital double-knot—the sort Tottles tied in his
shoe-laces when they were on holiday in the city and she didn’t want to have to
stop and fix them four-and-sixty times a mile. When it was all done to Simpian’s
satisfaction, he led Sylvi to a bit of grass circled by the cat-and-kitten
weeds with the pop-off heads. There was no time to play the cat-and-kitten game,
however, so Simpian patted Sylvi’s soft shoulder and cleared his throat a time
or two.
He thought it sounded like a
pirate. He hoped it sounded like a pirate, and because he was not quite sure,
he cleared his throat again. “Grrrrraribumph!” Yes—quite Pirate-ian. He might
as well be captain of a sailing ship for how good it sounded.
Simpian watched Sylvi shiver just
a little bit as if she thought he might not be Simpian after all, but a sort of
Black-beard. Then an idea came to him for getting Sylvi away from Cottleston
Pie. An idea that might not require a Snake at all, but only a bit of
cleverness on his part. Simpian stomped awhile around the cat-and-kitten weeds,
making a sound like large muddy boots with his feet.
“Little Rrrrrrrabit!” he growled,
rolling the first part of the word so he sounded like a drummer in a
Fourfin-July parade.
Sylvi shivered again as if a cold
Febberary breeze was blowing down her shirt-collar. “Y-yes?”
“Do you know the way to
Cottleston Pie?” He added a second growl for good measure and stomped like muddy
boots a little more.
Sylvi shifted and pulled at the
knot of her ears. Simpian had done a good job tying his knot—it would not
budge. “This…this is Cottleston Pie,” she said at last. And it seemed to
Simpian that her voice was very small and not at all proud.
Her
comeuppance! he thought.
He crossed his arms and tucked his chin to help his voice sound a little less
like Simpian’s. “Well, if this is Cottleston Pie, then I must kidnap you.”
“Me?”
Simpian had to clap one hand over
his mouth and turn the laughter into a pirate-growl when he saw how Sylvi
scrambled backward and tried to tear the knot apart. But Tottles’ sort of knot
never came out—Simpian knew from lots of holidays in the city.
“Why must you k-k-kidnap me?” she
asked. Her voice sounded very cross and thin and high like an angry robin’s.
Simpian clenched his fists and
puffed out his chest, feeling very tall. “Because Cottleston Pie is going to be
mine.”
“It’s mine,” Sylvi retorted.
“Is not!”
“Is too!” Sylvi hopped one hop
forward and then—seeming to remember something she’d forgot—hopped backward,
away from him.
“Are you Simpian Grenadine?”
Simpian asked. He made his voice sound blustery as if it had a large and
bristling moustache and a row of brass buttons up its front. “Because,” and he
paused to think up something especially horrid. It came to him all at once: “Because
I have sworn by every hair on my chin to slice Simpian Grenadine into little bits
and feed him piece by piece to the crows in the Rickety Pines.”
“I-I am not Simpian Grenadine!” Sylvi was now backed up against the
cat-and-kitten weeds quivering.
“But you said you were the master
of Cottleston Pie,” Simpian said. The moustache in his voice bristled.
“Well,” was all Sylvi said.
“The only master of Cottleston
Pie…” Simpian stood on tip-toe and shouted the last bit like a foghorn: “IS
SIMPIAN GRENADINE! My knife is sharp and my temper’s hot, I’ve come for you, b’lieve
it or not!” And Simpian galloped in a circle all round Sylvi, plucking at the
knot in her ears and laughing when she squeaked.
Sylvi tumbled over backwards and to
Simpian’s complete astonishment, the knot came undone. Simpian turned three
shades of guilty red and felt more like Only-Allister than he had in a
fortnight. Now that he wasn’t so busy playing Pirate, it seemed to him a bit of
a bad sport to scare such a little thing. Sylvi flipped her ears back into their
proper places—crinkled though they were—and without a look at Simpian, fled
Cottleston Pie.
After she was gone, the hot, late
sun settled with all the heaviness of Tottles’ fruitcake on Simpian’s neck. If
it had been a giant’s hand, he would have pushed it away. If it had been a
scarf, he’d have ripped it off. But as it was only the sunlight and there was
no escaping it, Simpian wandered back to his tree-house, climbed the rickety
ladder, and wondered if it had been terribly mean of him to scare that little
rabbit so. Cottleston Pie seemed quieter than ever now. There were no pirates—at
present—and no birds. Butterfly-or-flies was nowhere to be seen, nor was there even
one grass-snake sunning himself on the large flat stone.
Lonesome.
That’s what it was.
Lonesome.
The more Simpian thought about
it, the worse he felt. Lonesome like gingerbread men without cinnamon-buttons.
Lonesome like spice-cookies without cambric tea. Lonesome like shoes without
laces. He rolled over onto his stomach and waited for the dinner bell to ring,
and he almost almost wished Sylvi had
not run away.
***
So....what do you think of it? Knowing Gracie and many other little kids, I decided they like a bit of danger...a bit of peril. So I put in the bit about the knife, realizing most censors will make me take it out. But--HAHA!--this is a book that will probably never be published and that I am writing strictly to please myself and my dear little funny-duckling so there.
Posts
