Spirited Away - The Game

The old man doesn't seem to have an answer for those questions. Starhouse hadn't described the "magician" beyond calling him a vagrant. As for the direction of his flight, he had mentioned north.

"I felt he meant to leave England. But even if Scotland is his ultimate goal, I don't know which route he is taking. I suspect he didn't have a clear plan beyond putting some distance between himself and Tubbs. I advised him to keep to the interior and avoid the coasts unless he intends to be captured by the press-gang and catch the Yellow Jack in some foreign part, but beyond that..." the man shrugs.

"Hmm... this vagrant passenger, calling himself a powerful magician. That sounds like classic charlatan talk to me, what do you think Mr Peglar?" he asks, after a long reflection.

"Could Mr Tubbs be so gullible as to believe the words of such a character?"

"Aye, he could. He wishes to see things a certain way so he does; I suppose this would make him gullible. I'm surprised he hasn't sold his cow for a magic bean yet! Or maybe he has, but he is rich, so it makes no difference to him." Peglar smacks his lips and looks wistfully at his empty cup. The gin has made him talkative but he looks like he has said most of what he has to say.

"If you wish to find the old beggar," he says, meaning Tubbs and not the alleged magician, "you ought to ask the missis. When a husband disappears in these parts a call goes out and the entire village goes out to look for him. Yet she has not given the call. Either she knows where he is, or she is not very keen on finding him."

"Very good point. That is sound advice, Mr Peglar."

He pauses in thought, then "about Mr Starhouse... we heard he is really good with animals. You know much about that? How was he with cats? We heard Mrs Tubbs suddenly despises those critters..."

"Does she now? I know nothing about that. But yes, Jack had a way with animals, even cats who usually don't listen to anyone. Surely it is a gift of sorts, a bit strange, but I doubt there's anything magical about it. There was this caulker's mate I knew in '72..." the old man is dangerously close to beginning another story, even less relevant than the one about the valiant minstrel.

"As fascinating as that sounds, Mr. Peglar," Maximilian says, interrupting the man's story before it proceeds far enough for that interruption to become rude. "I believe my associate and I do unfortunately have to leave. We may well come by again if we find ourselves with some time at hand to listen to the rest of this tale, if you do not mind?"

"Ah yes... of course... we thank you for this interesting conversation."

After they take their leave, and out of Peglar's earshot, he comments:
"Hmm. I thought we'd find a gullible believer, but Mr Peglar seems a firm skeptic..."

He looks at the sky.
"Since we are Persona Non Grata at the Tubbs', perhaps a survey of Mr Tubbs' magic garden is better suited after dark... But while we have daylight, we could retrace the Eastbound road, see if the mysterious self-appointed vagrant magician left some traces of his stop in some village or inn?"

"I believe that is a decent plan," Maximilian confirms. "Leave the skulking for the dark. We have spoken to Mr. Peglar for quite some time, but there is still some daylight left. If Mr. Tubbs truly went eastwards, someone must have seen him or this 'magician'." He thinks for a moment. "Though I quite wonder why he wouldn't have followed Mr. Starhouse Northwards."

"hmm. Perhaps. Mr Starhouse clearly got spooked by the two men... Spooked enough to drop everything and run away. That's some conversation, that Mr Tubbs and the vagrant must have had, in that coach!... Makes one wonder if Starhouse wasn't a little... impressionable. It is a possibility that the 'plot against him' was all in his head..."

"I will get the horses ready..."

"Whether there was a plot or not, it seems Mr. Starhouse had been uncomfortable with Mr. Tubbs' attention for a while already by this point. Something would have been the final straw. It just so happened that it was this vagrant, whether justified or not."
Max nods when Edward says he will get the horses ready.

The Eastern road seems to be holding its secrets close. Nothing on it suggest that a vagrant magician has walked on it in the past week or so. Maybe the crows who swarm the fields to feast on the leftovers of the harvest have seen something, but if they have, they are telling it in their crow language, little caring if Maximilian and Edward can understand them or not.

The few people on the road are equally uncooperative. One friendly soul apologises profusely for his ignorance, but see, he is not local and has only just arrived and knows nothing; another - decisively unfriendly - wishes them "good day" in a way which suggests that nothing would please him more than their day turning out rotten; and one informs them that the world is a big bowl of milk and people have been put on it to curdle it into cheese, and one day very soon, most likely next week on Thursday, the cheese would be sufficiently ripe to be eaten and then the world would come to an end.

Hours pass this way and as the short autumn day starts to wane and the wind to blow cold, it seems that all their effort has been a waste of time. And then finally - a lead. A crooked bent woman tells the two travellers that a week ago a "villain" had been caught stealing eggs from a nearby farm. He had claimed to be a magician and the superstitious fear of him had stopped the farmer from inflicting the deserved punishment, but even so the "villain" had been chased away - and as she says it, the old woman points back the way Maximilian and Edward had come from. They would need to retrace their steps and look for anything they have missed on their way.

"An egg-thief AND a magician, how interesting... he is proving elusive, though," he says, tired from the search but brightening up at the finding of some trace of the vagrant's passage.

"If you have to steal something, it may as well be eggs," Maximilian says. "I would not say no to some nice fried eggs right about now. And maybe a glass of eggnog."

Some miles back they find it - a branching of the road hidden by an unruly hedge. There is a sign among the shrubs, barely peeking out as if shy about its shabby appearance - the faded markings which look to be prices for beverages are unreadable under the grime and lichen; for those who can not read there is a similarly faint painting of a mug or possibly a pitcher, it is impossible to tell. Both the path and the sign are positioned in such a way that they are almost impossible to spot if one is not coming at them from the right direction.

The path leads to a squat, uninviting building. At some point all the windows have been bricked up, possibly to avoid the tax, and it makes the house look cold and abandoned in the falling darkness. However a thin strip of light coming from under the door betrays that the place is occupied, and there is the faint smell of something cooking. If the sign by the road is to be believed, drinks should be offered here, and probably hot stew - if Tubbs had given the vagabond magician any money before parting with him, it is possible that the alleged sorcerer had come here to spend it.

"And we thought Mrs Fiona's Inn was badly signposted!" he comments at the oddly inconspicuous building. "This is like they made a deliberate attempt to conceal this place. And why bricking the windows, I wonder..."

"Yet it is our best bet. Let us see if the mysterious vagrant showed his face here, shall we?" he says steppung up to the building.

He knocks loudly at the door, "hello? Is this establishment open for two thirsty guests?" he calls loud and clear.

The establishment the two travelers are invited in has nothing of The Billy Goat's sophisticated elegance. It does however possess a fug thick enough to be cut with a knife and a bouquet of smells - burning tallow from the rushlights, bland stew from the pot in the fireplace, wet wool from the coats of the dozen or so rustic gentlemen populating the room. There is no furniture to speak of, the chairs and benches are constructed from planks, rough tree stumps and overturned water pails.

The landlady - a large woman with the slightly slovenly appearance of someone who has far too much work to care whether her hair is put in order or if the patches in her linen are showing from under her untidy dress - gestures towards a lumpy sack and a limp milking stool in one courner of the room.

"I'll be with you in a moment," she says without any other form of greeting.

"This place does seem to be a bit questionable," Maximilian whispers to Edward. "They're keeping themselves hidden. We should keep our guard up, and our eyes open." At that last part, the young gentleman lets his eyes wander, just to see if there are any interesting - and by that, he mostly means attractive - people here.