Sylvia looked puzzled. “San Francisco?”
“Or at least Oakland. The city across the bay. We’re thirty miles south of it now.”
“Oh,” Sylvia said. “I’m afraid I know the names of few of the local towns.”
I glanced at Chester. It occurred to me that I wasn’t the only one capable of practical jokes.
“Is it near New Camelot?” Sylvia asked.
Chester leaned back. It was hard to tell what he was thinking. He slipped the sopranino recorder out of his belt and put it to his lips.
“At any rate, you must be mistaken about the train,” Sylvia told me calmly.
“I must,” I agreed, “it’s a compulsion.”
Jake started another song. Chester played back-of-the-room accompaniment on the recorder very softly. His face had the distinct bland look that meant he was deep in thought.
“You said the whole crew is out looking for the unicorn now?” I asked. Sylvia nodded. ‘What crew is that?’
“From the circus,” Sylvia told me. “Everyone that wasn’t too busy is out looking for Adolphus. I followed the twisty road, calling his name, until I got here. I thought he’d come to me, since I’m his keeper now and we’re rather fond of each other, but he didn’t. Maybe one of the others has found him by now, but I doubt it. If he won’t come to me, then he won’t let anyone else near him.”
Twisty road? I wondered.
“You’re from a circus?” Chester asked.
“Of course. Where else would you find a unicorn?”
“Yes,” Chester agreed. “Where else indeed?” Jake had finished his set and was going offstage. In the silence Chester played a variant of an old circus song that we called “MacDougal Street Saturday Night” on the recorder. He followed that with a complicated baroque version of “Greensleeves.”
“You play that well,” Sylvia said.
“Thank you.”
“Adolphus is quite fond of woodwind music. Do you happen to know ‘Barkus Is Willing’?”
“Barkus Is Willing?”
“Yes. That’s his favorite. It goes ‘ta ti dum-dum ti de diddly di, ta dum reedle fiddle fap’.” She had a strong, clear soprano voice.
“I, er, think I know it under a different name,” Chester said. He played it for her:
“That’s it,” she said. “But could you play it lower?”
“Lower?” Chester asked. Putting the sopranino down, he took the alto recorder from its canvas case and started adjusting the sections in that mysterious way recorder players put their machines together. “What key?”
“Fa, I think.”
“Right,” Chester agreed. “The key of fa it is.” He blew note through the hardwood tube, and then a riff. “How’s that?”
“Very good. Excellent,” the girl agreed. “If you’d come out into the woods with me, you could play ‘Barkus is Willing’ while I call Adolphus. He must be around somewhere.”
I was, I freely admit, miffed. Pied Piper Anderson was doing it again. Just because he could make music come out of that petrified pipe, while the best I could ever do was a startled pheep.
Sylvia turned to me. She had the largest eyes I’d ever seen off of an oil painting. “Of course you’ll come, Michael, and help. Please?”
Wild gryphons couldn’t have kept me away.
CHAPTER TWO
If you ever find yourself at a romantically lit table in the rear of an old roadhouse cum gambling casino that’s been turned into an entertainment coffeehouse, staring into a beautiful girl’s large eyes and telling her that she’s your princess and you’re going to help her find her unicorn, there’s a cure. Go outside with her into the parking lot. It’s impossible to keep any sort of romantic illusions intact in a parking lot —even if it fronts the Pacific Ocean thirty miles south of San Francisco. There we were, standing among orderly rows of squat electric cars and hulking gas buggies, feeling silly. At least, I was feeling silly. It was hard to tell what Chester was feeling, with his collar turned up against the damp breeze and the recorder clutched like a club in his right hand, but somehow I knew that neither of us looked like a gallant unicorn-rescuer.
Sylvia was splendid. Head erect, she marched between the rows of cars to the private sound of her own orchestra. A slightly pixilated orchestra, to judge by the skip in her step. We two followed, marching to the somber beat of a different, and much more melancholy, drummer. When we entered the glare of the single, powerful spotlight that illuminated the entrance to the driveway, Sylvia paused and looked around. For the first time the cars were lit up well enough to see clearly, and she stared at them in evident surprise. “What,” she asked, pointing a delicate hand vaguely at the parked vehicles, “are these beasts?”
“Cars?”
“Automobiles,” Chester explained. “Horseless carriages. Nothing a girl hunting for her unicorn would be expected to know about.”
“Are they common in this part of the world?”
I looked at Chester. “Time travel?” I suggested.
“Love to,” he replied. He mouthed his alto recorder, and lustily blew “Barkus Is Willing” into the night, while I tried to explain to Sylvia how it was with horseless carriages.
“Yoo hoo, Sylvia!” a deep baritone boomed out of the dark.
“Sylvia,” a mellifluous tenor added, “is that you?”
Sylvia clapped her hands together delightedly. “My friends,” she exclaimed. “My comrades. Perhaps they have found Adolphus.” She rose up on the toes of her tiny feet and cupped her hands to her mouth. “Here,” she called. “Over here!”
There was a clopping sound, and three figures appeared in the shadows. “Sylvia,” the baritone called. “We were beginning to think we’d lost you, too.” The figures moved toward us.
I now had a good working definition of the old phrase too much. This was too much. Much too much. Girls of my dreams suddenly appearing and asking me to help find their unicorns I could accept. After all, if Alice hadn’t fallen down that rabbit hole, where would the world be now? But believing in Sylvia’s friends would require practice. The first, in order from left to right, was a tall, slender girl with long, red hair, dressed in an off-white, off-the-shoulder Grecian style gown. I could believe in her. The second, however, was a centaur. From the waist up, he was wearing a lace-trimmed shirt, fluffy silk tie, and an eight button jacket with wide lapels. From the waist down he was a horse. The last was a man, eight feet tall and wide as a church door, but still a man. He had the build appropriate for a giant: I could see the muscles ripple under his net shirt. When he got one step closer, I noticed something else: he had only one eye ---which was centered above his broad nose.
The centaur, I could see as they came under the light, was a deep Olive green. The cyclops was wearing a monocle.
“Anderson,” I yelped. “You promised, You swore faithfully that you’d never do it again. How can I learn to trust you if I can’t trust you?”
Chester had taken the sopranino recorder from his belt and was squinting at the spotlight and playing both machines at once. I refused to be impressed. He stopped playing when I prodded him and squinted at me. “What’s the trouble, son?” he asked in an irritated