Chapter Eighteen: In Which Ralph the Timid meets Boris.

Ralph the Timid walked down the mountain, whistling merrily. He liked to whistle merrily while he walked. It made the day seem more cheerful and his walk more purposeful. And Ralph liked to do anything that made him seem more purposeful. He wished his parents had left him a chart when they had so heartlessly abandoned him in the mountains. He did not allow it to weigh his spirits down however. He was on his way! And now he had friends to travel with as well.

For Ginger McSporran - though maybe not Twinkle - was an excellent travelling companion. He joined in the whistling. He did not race ahead or lag behind, and sometimes flew up above the trees with a massive flap of his mighty wings to see what progress was being made. On these occasions Ralph had to hold the sack containing Twinkle, who was not such a good traveller. The cat also seemed to know who was holding the sack and deployed claws appropriately. Ralph was covered in scratches, but he didn't complain. Ralph always made the best of things.

He was now making the best of the fact that they hadn't been able to rid themselves of Mad Pete and Ethel. Well, at least they hadn't been able to rid themselves of Mad Pete. Ethel kept flying ahead, perching on a suitably doughty bough and waiting for them, so she was barely with the party for more than a few moments at a time. But Mad Pete was there constantly.Ralph tried to whistle a little more loudly and tunefully and merrily to cover his irritation. However good a travelling companion the black beast of the caves was, Mad Pete was quite the opposite.

He got blisters and complained loudly about how sore his feet were. He got stones in his shoes and had to stop to take them off, and would whine incessantly if Ralph and Ginger McSporran refused to stop for him. The only slightly redeeming factor was that he had, after several hours, finally stopped asking for his package. A small child in the back of a carriage could ask repeatedly if they were there yet ad infinitium and ad nauseum; Mad Pete could ask for his parcel for twice as long and in an infinitely more annoying voice.

But at last it seemed he had given up and was now trying to sing along to the whistling in a peculiarly raspy tenor voice. Unfortunately he did not know the song so he was singing more a tuneless "Tum te tum tum tum te te tum" that any particular song. Still, it was better than fruitlessly arguing about the parcel.

The three travellers plus one cat in a bag continued on down the mountain. Ethel swooped ahead of them through the trees.

Time passed, and eventually they reached a road, running down the mountain from the villages above, probably including the one from which Ralph had departed only recently. He wondered to himself why he had not taken the road to begin with, but then thought that if he had, he would not have met Mad Pete (not such a great loss) or Ginger McSporran (which would be a shame) and he wouldn't be having such an interesting adventure.Ralph the Timid was not forgetting to seek his purpose, but he was somewhat distracted from it.

The road made the going easier, and the company picked up its pace. Ethel stuck closer to the foot travellers now, as she seemed to feel an Unexpectedly Large Warbler in company would attract less attention that an Unexpectedly Large Warbler travelling alone along a road in the middle of nowhere, which theory may or may not have been justified but had little opportunity to be tested as they did not meet anyone all that day.

Nor the next day. Nor the day after that, or the day after that. At length, however, they passed out of the mountains into the foothills, and began to see signs of habitation. Here a farmhouse, there a barn, some cows in a field, a dairymaid. This last they stopped to talk to, and she told them they were near Foothillsborough, the biggest town in the foothills. All they needed to do was stay on this road.

As they none of them had no desire to go plunging off across farmers' fields getting shot at for trespassing (except maybe Mad Pete, but then he was mad, so no one was going to listen to him) they followed the advice of the dairymaid and stayed on the road. Soon they were passing more and more houses and people. The houses just sat there, but the people tended to stare a bit and say "Would you look at that?" in an exclamatory way to their friends, if they were with some, or to themselves, if they weren't. Ralph the Timid felt quite self conscious and kept trying to hide his eyes from the strangers. Why were they staring at him? What was there to look at? Did he have something on his face? Maybe some dirt in an embarrassing place on his trousers from when he fell over the other day?
It didn't occur to him that perhaps a young man travelling with a giant cave dwelling winged black beast, a middle aged motely dressed self professed and very evidently mad man, a sack that periodically meowed or snarled and a giant rare bird the size of a very big sheep was probably the least interesting of them all. No one was looking at him at all.
In Foothillsborough they managed, with some difficulty, to find rooms at an inn for the night. One might imagine at this point that it was Ginger McSporran that made finding the rooms so difficult, being so scary looking and all. But in fact one would find that having a black beast from the caves with you when looking for rooms was actually quite helpful, as no one wanted to make him made. No, the problem was quite different. A festival was going on in Foothillsborough to celebrate the anniversary of the founding of Foothillsborough five hundred years earlier.
Ralph the Timid privately had some doubts about whether the town was in fact five hundred years old as most of it looked, to his eye at least, quite modern. But there, maybe it had all burned to the ground about one hundred years ago, and they had had to be rebuild. He shouldn't be so sceptical. At any rate, a lot of people thought it had been founded then, and were celebrating it with a lot of noise and dancing and alchoholic beverages. Everyone (except for the dairymaid) from the outlying farms and nearby towns had come to join the party, and it was this that made finding accomodation such a tricky business.
Nevertheless - and probably thanks to the menacing aspect of Ginger McSporran - they finally managed to find two rooms in an inn that was not quite as dirty as the one in which Lady Ann had been tied to the bar. It was still very dirty, however, but the travellers were so relieved to have found somewhere to sleep they would've slept in a stable.
Ralph the Timid shared with Ginger McSporran, Twinkle and the parcel while Mad Pete roomed with Ethel. If it had not been for his odd dreams about Mad Pete, Ralph the Timid would almost have preferred to share a room with him. Ginger McSporran snored, although not loudly, but it wasn't that which made Ralph the Timid a little anxious. In general he liked cats, but Twinkle was an exception.
The cat was out to get him, he was sure, and in an inn with Ethel doing her Unexpectedly Large Warbling bit in a completely different room, Twinkle would have no reservations about emerging from his sack to do dastardly deeds from which Ralph the Timid would, no doubt, come off second best. It was a hard life, thought Ralph, trying to find your purpose.
His fears proved correct over night, having woken up several times to find claws digging into his chest and the strangely jubliant face of Twinkle looking into his. The cat seemed to have that omnipotent power of all animals to go for the weak or young, or just the one that doesn't like them.
Fortunately it was only for one night and the next day, having paid their bill, the travellers made their way through the party goers in the town with Twinkle securely back in his bag. It struck Ralph that maybe having been forced to fend for himself while Ginger McSporran went travelling may have been preferable for Twinkle than being carried around in a sack for days on end. But he didn't seem to mind, as long as his master was carrying him. He only objected when handed over to Ralph.
On the far side of Foothillsborough they managed to get directions to Rangville, which was apparently only a day and a half's journey from there. Ralph hoped that Boris Blockoff would actually be home, in that case. He could be here, celebrating the five hundredth anniversary of Foothillsborough. If he was, though, they would never find him. Much easier to go to Rangville on the Low Plains and wait.
And so they did.
As it turned out, he was indeed at the Foothillsborough festival, according to the lone servant who had stayed behind. And so they waited. They waited outside his house, an elaborate three-storeyed affair with a very pointy roof.
They waited and waited. After three days (during which time they had found somewhere better to sleep than the doorstep, patronising a local hostelry instead) when Ralph the Timid and Ginger McSporran (Mad Pete and Ethel having gone wandering) presented themselves on the doorstep, the door opened to them.
"Please come in - I hear you've been waiting for me." said a voice. It was Boris Blockoff at last.

(Word Count: 23732)