me
in front of) Gwendolyn. Without breaking stride, she shouldered them down, trampled them under, and hauled the iron-rimmed wheels of the cart directly over their bodies. A cart, mind you, bearing not only my weight but that of the giant Wolfgang as well!
I was adapting to Grotum, I could tell. The sound of crunching bones was a pure musical delight.
“Oh, well done! Well done!” hissed Wolfgang.
“Thank you,” muttered Gwendolyn.
“I wasn’t talking to you, dear,” chuckled Wolfgang. “I was referring to the masterful whipwork. Are you by any chance related to Larue Sfrondrati-Piccolomini?”
“My uncle,” I whispered. “And will you please shut up? You’ll give it away, people see your lips moving—you’re supposed to be a damned statue!”
“Not to fear, my boy. I’m a ventriloquist, you know.”
Casually I turned my head, looking into the back of the cart. There was Wolfgang, posed cross-legged like a saint—a statue of a saint, more properly. Quite a good likeness, if I say so myself. I had discovered that painting a man up to look like a huge wooden icon was not all that difficult—not, at least, for an artist like myself who had carved and painted more wooden icons by the time I was nine than I could remember.
Wolfgang’s stance was perfect. He was absolutely rigid and unmoving, for all the world like—well, actually, like a wooden statue.
“It’ll be the easiest thing in the world for me to manage,” he’d said after he’d explained the scheme. “The head psychiatrist at the asylum says I’ve got the finest catatonic trance he’s ever examined! Such a compliment!”
And I’ll admit his ventriloquism was as good as his catatonia. I couldn’t see a trace of his lips moving, even as he continued to babble on.
“I knew it! I knew it! The wonderful touch with the scalps! The unmistakable style! And the bon mots!” He bubbled with mad laughter—a strange sound and sight, let me tell you, coming from unmoving lips! Grotesque, really.
“I was there, you know,” he continued, “at the Criticism of the Critics. I was actually there in person!”
I was stunned. “You were there? You saw it?”
The smug voice: “Every moment. From the preface, to the disclaimer, to the rebuttal, to the conclusion. One of my fondest memories.”
It was before my time, of course, but it was a legend in the clan. Over the years, I’ll admit to growing a bit skeptical. But as we made our slow way down the boulevard, Gwendolyn stolidly hauling the cart through