Inn-keeper Boris's idea to give Brontes the minotaur some useful work leads to an attempted murder and an astounding revelation.
This episode is brought to you by the village's tourism committee.
Come and visit us sometime!

Series Link
-1-2-3-4- 5-6-7-



oOo


Another day, another drama.

My head is still spinning after the events of yesterday, even after a half-dozen hot toddies, a good night's sleep and a full breakfast. Let me tell you what happened.

It was a delightful early spring day, and I was taking my constitutional through the village with, of course, a plan for a quick detour to the common room at the Inn. Well, I'm hardly going to pass by without taking something warm to fortify my blood, am I?

Boris had had the Inn whitewashed over the weekend. He's the landlord, by the way, and he's a pretty tough old polar bear. No-one messes with Boris. Because he had caused trouble so often, Brontes had been told to do the actual work in payment for the latest damage he caused. (I believe it was a wooden chair whose leg was not even, and the minotaur tried to repair the imbalance with his axe. The chair ended up about four inches tall.)

I did, for my part, warn Boris that this might not be a particularly inspired idea, but Boris had one of his familiar manic looks on his face and I thought it prudent not to labour the point too much. Anyway, he assured me that whitewash was easy to remove from window glass, so what damage could the bull do? What damage indeed.

I walked around the outside before I went in and checked the workmanship. I consider it my duty, don't you know; I mean, I can hardly complement the fine work if I haven't inspected it fully. It wasn't half as bad as I had feared. There was puddles of dried paint on the ground and on the grass (I expected that) and there was splots of paint on the underside of the thatched roof (I expected that too). Most impressively, there was a decent layer of paint on the actual walls and only the occasional blot on the thick glass of the windows and doors. Out the back, a broken scaffold and a huge blotch of white paint in the yard was evidence of the only major boo-boo, but you couldn't see that from the front anyway.

Boris must have been pleased. Brontes seemed to have done a reasonable job for once. Feeling pleased that my bovine friend had finally found his forté, I went in, hoping that the minotaur was inside having his lunch so I could congratulate him on a job well done. After I hung up my coat on the hook that's always left for me, I pushed open the door of the common room and gave my usual greeting ('God bless all here, except the cat and the dog') and gaped over to the corner in complete and total amazement and astonishment.

Brontes was there, in his usual place, a bowl of grain mash before him. He was pushing it around with his wooden spoon, his head propped up on the knuckles of one hand, and a very unpleasant scowly look on his wide face. I managed to run out the door before my guffaws burst from me (and as old as I am, running out through doorways is not a thing I believe I should do too often.) I gulped down air and tried to wipe the tears from my eyes, then -- as brave as any of my illustrious vulpine forebears going into battle in the wars of long ago -- I pushed open the door and walked up to the thundercloud, under which sat the bad-tempered bull.

"Good day, Brontes," I said, my lip quivering. Behind the bar, Boris stood wiping a glass and grinning mightily. I focused my attention on Brontes, as I knew eye contact with Boris would make me burst with laughter. I tried to hold control of myself by repeating 'everything is normal' over and over in my head. Everything was normal. Normal. Nice. Normal. "I--uh--see you were painting?"

He looked up at me with a mixture of resignation and sullenness. Behind the counter, Boris doubled over and snorted a series of laughs that would be more suited to a hyena than a polar bear. The edges of my mouth quivered upwards. I had to blink rapidly to clear my vision as my eyes were watering up from the effort of holding myself in.

Brontes is a tarbh. That's a kind of minotaur that comes from the far north. For clothes, he wears a loincloth and a big leather harness that holds his axe, and he doesn't give a fig about being out in bad weather. He's big and stocky and very powerful. His fur is quite unlike mine: he calls it his 'pelt'. We foxes have nice soft, plush fur, and I'm very proud of my brush. Brontes' pelt is more like hair than fur, being more wiry and short, except around his shoulders and the top of his head, where it's longer and somewhat curly. It's black too, jet black, like his 8-ball eyes and pointy horns. It's a darkness that usually gives him a brooding, malevolent presence ... usually. Except this time.

His horns, his snout, his face, his chest, his arms, most of his harness, even some of his loincloth -- it was all covered in whitewash. He looked like one million pigeons had dive-bombed him at random. Oh gods, he was a sight! I lost control and had to dash for the front door again, shouting that I forgot my umbrella. Outside, I fell down on my knees and laughed until I cried. Oh, dear gods! Now it became clear -- the broken scaffold and the big area of white paint out back ... and I'll bet it doesn't come off so easily from his pelt.

It took me a few minutes to get myself collected, and I managed to get a painful stitch in my side from my merriment. As I took a couple of deep breaths, I noticed a stranger with a map in his hands was looking down at me with a worried look on his face. I straightened up with difficulty, and smiled politely at the newcomer as he asked me if I was quite alright.

"Believe me, I'm well, and thank you for your concern. How can I help you?"

The stranger was an otter, with a flat cap on his head, some very bright slacks and a zippered jacket. The moment he opened his mouth I knew he was a lost American tourist.

"Say, buddy. I'm lookin' for the Historic Castle Remains." I swear I could hear him capitalise the words. "Ya wooden' know if they's hereabouts, would ya?"

I grinned in as friendly a manner as I could muster and wiped the last tears from my eyes. Our ruined castle was our village's main attraction and occasionally brought tourists from all over the world. I noticed the otter had lovely newly shined patent-leather shoes on his feet and thought about warning him about the muddy cart-track to the castle, but he'd find that out all by himself soon enough. I prefer hob-nailed boots myself.

"Oh. Right," I said, pointing to the east of the square. "The castle is about five minutes walk up that laneway. There's a signpost at the stile you need to cross, and it's at the top of the clover field. You can't miss it."

"Good on ya, buddy!" he replied enthusiastically as he looked in the opposite direction. It crossed my mind that someone from a big place like America just might not know what a stile is, but as he didn't ask, I didn't expand on it. "Say, is this a Pub?"

I nodded. Boris would love to hear his beloved Inn being described as a mere pub, but it's not my place to correct others all the time. The tourist looked delighted and pulled out his camera.

"Say, buddy, can I get a photo of a native outside the Pub?"

I had a vague vision of this guy and his fat otterish wife showing the photos of his trip to their fat polystyrene-clad friends in a huge pink and blue living room with a projector and a screen, like you see in the style magazines the ladies read in the hairdressers. (Now, don't look at me like that. The barber shop is right next door and they mix up the magazines sometimes. Ladies magazines are terrifying. It's all about murders and spousal abuse and how to make delicious meals from offal.) He'd press the button and the motes in the room would be lit by an image of our fine Inn. I'd be there, all red and grey fur, with my crooked-fanged smile, the pipe hanging from my lips, and he'd announce that this was one of the natives and wow don't they sure look awesome and so old and not like us and my grandpappy would'a looked like him if'n he wuz a fox and not a ottur ... oh boy.

I stood and let the otter make a couple of Kodachromes of me, standing outside the freshly whitewashed Inn, looking like the front cover of the National Geographic. Then, without so much as a thank you (or a dollar for my time), he bounced into the porch and through to the common room. Tourists. Can't live with them, as the old saying goes, can't bury them in the bog. Well, factually, you can but our local sergeant doesn't like the extra paperwork, so it's frowned-upon.

(I jest. We love our tourists. Do come visit.)

I lit my pipe and took a long puff. I don't smoke much and I don't really like it, but the scent of the tobacco reminds me of my grandfather and brings back fond memories. A hot toddy would bring back even more, I realised, and knocked the contents of the pipe bowl against the heel of my boot. Hitching up my pants, I headed once more into the common room, bracing myself not to laugh at Brontes' new look.

The atmosphere inside the common room had soured. Boris was standing by the bar hatch, looking concerned, the others that had been there had made themselves scarce and disappeared out to the outside toilets (or I assumed so, as they hadn't passed me by) and it took no effort at all to realise what had to be the cause. A hint. He's always the cause.

The American tourist was rabbiting out about how cute Brontes looked, how unique he was, how few minotaurs are 'back home in the States', and how rare a 'speckled bull' is back in Texas. At one point he even said he looked like a panda and I took an unconscious step backwards. The otter clicked away on his camera almost as fast as his words flew from his lips. Blissfully unaware of the volcanic eruption that was seething before him, he pulled the table away from the tarbh and spilled some of his lunch onto the floor.

"Say, can you stand up, Bull? I can't see the rest of ya!"

Brontes gave that familiar look that translates roughly as "Lo, I shalt fetch my sacred weapon of war, then verily shall I smite thee many times until thou art deceased and join with thy God." (So I can quote from the bible. I can do lost of interesting things -- like judge when to run away.) Boris reached under the counter and slowly pulled out his baseball bat. Peculiar that. Here we had an otter goading a minotaur from Tauria, and a polar bear that wouldn't know a baseball if he ate one was about to grab a bit of equipment that only the American would recognise for what it really was. My head began to swim.

"Mister Otter! You want to go to the castle! Go now!" I hissed, putting a hand on the tourist's shoulder. He shucked it off without looking at me and continued clicking his camera.

"Nah, buddy! I wanna take pics of this spotty cow! Gee! I never noo yoo guys had cows here too!"

Brontes pushed the table further and reached behind him for his axe, which he pulled from his harness with a very cold and deliberate stare. I backed away rapidly. This was not a look I felt any of my soft words could temper. The tarbh spoke, his voice chilling and as menacing as anything I have ever heard in my entire life.

"Otter. I shall count to twenty. Then I shall come after you with this axe and I shall slaughter you slowly and drink your blood. One. Two. Three."

The tourist's camera slowly moved down from his face and his jaw hung open. He blanched as he moved his shocked stare from Brontes' white horns past his black and white snout, to his paint-covered hands and his pristine, gleaming, viciously sharp silver axe.

"... Eight. Nine."

A heartbeat later, the otter screamed and ran for the doors. He crashed through them and they slammed shut behind him. His terror-filled roars echoed outside as he headed for his bus, screaming at his fellows to run away and hide.

"... Nineteen. Twenty."

Brontes hefted his weapon, straightened his loincloth, then stomped out past the doors and headed across the square. I was horrified, believing that the minotaur was going to do something awful and get into a level of trouble that was far worse than anything he had ever managed heretofore. I looked helplessly at Boris, hoping the polar bear would come up with something that would stave off the inevitable (such as whacking the bull over his thick skull with the bat), but he was just standing motionless at the bar with a slack-jawed expression of astonishment all over his white-furred face.

"Boris! What's wrong with you! He's going to kill that tourist! You have to help me stop him!"

"I can't," Boris replied, staring blankly at the still-swinging door. "I'm in shock."

"What? That Brontes is going to kill someone?"

"No, no. I just don't believe what I heard. He can count!"

oOo