Chapter Twenty Four: In Which Mad Pete resumes his explanations.

There was silence in the library.
"Well," said Mad Pete at last, looking at Ralph then Ginger McSporran, then back at Ralph. "What do you think?"
Ralph shook his head slowly as if trying to clear it. It was as if Mad Pete's words had crawled inside his ears like spiders and spun web after web so he couldn't think clearly - not that spiders crawled into ears to spin their webs, not usually anyway, but that was what it felt like. "Are ... Am. ... What..." he struggled to engage the gears of his mind, like an old manual car stopped for traffic lights on a steep hill struggles to engage first gear. He stopped, looked over the sentence in his mind, and started again. "Why are you telling me this, Mad Pete?" He got up and walked over to the window on the far side of the room.
Ethel was still warbling happily in the garden. It seemed like nothing had happened out there. No time had passed. But yet for Ralph, everything had changed. He turned back to the others still seated by the empty fireplace. The light streamed in behind him, giving him an eerie backlit glow. "You know my story, Mad Pete," he said, slowly and clearly, as if the words were being dragged out of him. "Are you telling me that this is the answer to my quest? That I am the twin - the eviller of the twins - the boy who was abandoned in the mountains?"
Ginger McSporran gave a snort like a tractor engine starting up. It was such a snort that only a black beast of the caves could give. "Don't think that for a minute, young Ralph," he said disdainfully. "He's just telling a story, the old fool." He then turned to Mad Pete and looked at him omniously. "You still haven't answered my question, you foolish man. What is in the parcel? Why was it in my cave? Who put it there?"
Mad Pete, as the vestiges of his happy reverie of the days now long gone when he had been the master of all chartmakers slowly evaporated like dew in the sunshine, forebore to point out that Ginger McSporran had in fact just asked three questions, not one. He also didn't point out that the black beast of the caves was being a bit selfish. Surely Ralph's crisis of identity was far more important that some package? But one did not tend to point out such things to a being capable of ripping your arms off without even trying very hard. So he did not. Instead, he said. "I'm coming to that."
"To what?" said Ginger McSporran and Ralph the Timid at the same time, and then "to my quest?" and "to the parcel?" also at the same time, so it came out sounding like "to mhe quarstcel?"
Mad Pete looked a little blank.
"You go first." Ralph the Timid said to Ginger McSporran politely. His foster parents had raised him well, whatever his chart might say.
"No, you go first," said Ginger McSporran with equal politeness. His parents may have been cave beasts, but no one could say they were lacking in standards of ettiquette.
"No, no, I insist, " said Ralph, who had learnt the hard way that elders and betters should go before youth.
"No, I insist, " said Ginger McSporran, who always held doors for old ladies, even if they always ran away screaming rather than walk through them.
This continued for some minutes. It would have continued longer, had not Mad Pete suddenly got to his feet. "All right!" he said in a most exclamatory way, holding his hands over his ears. "Stop it! My mind is not omnipotent but it can handle most things. But it cannot handle such tedious arguments as this one! I will tell you what is in the package and it will answer all your questions."
He sat back down, and Ginger McSporran resettled himself on his hearthrug, and Twinkle climbed on his mighty lap and started purring and kneading his legs. "Ow!" muttered Ginger McSporran, trying to shift the cat "How many times must I tell you not to do that?" He looked over to Ralph, who was still lurking on the other side of the room, dramatically backlit by the sunshine pouring in through the windows. "Are you coming back to listen, Ralph?"
Ralph stood as upright and straight as a statue of a sentry by the window. "I can hear from here." he said shortly. The truth was he was scared he might get upset and do something terrible like start crying, and Ralph the Timid disdained tears. They were for babies and fraidycats and girls and wimpy people like that.
Mad Pete shook his head gravely and then launched into his narrative again. "So, where was I? Ah yes, I had sent the King and Queen away, having advised them to abandon the child in the mountains. And then, as I began to realise what I had done, how I had betrayed my calling, I grew more and more dissatisfied with the world and the lifestyle of chartmaking, and I gave it up to become a mad man. It wasn't easy. It was hard letting go of the fame and the money, and every now and then pirates would still try to kidnap me, so I had to make the occasional chart just to make them let me go. But now it's been ....oh, just a few years less than twenty" (here a stifled cry from Ralph the Timid was heard. More and more of the pieces matched the puzzle that was his life.) "and I haven't been kidnapped by pirates for a good five years at least. They got a bit tired of me, I think, " he said confidentially, idly stroking one multicoloured arm. "I always acted extra mad when they carried me off."
Ginger McSporran stroked Twinkle, who purred. Ralph stood as if he were carved from stone. Neither said anything, but it was clear that they both wanted Mad Pete to stop digressing and just get on with the damn story.
Mad Pete hurriedly raced into speech again. "So. I thought after a year that I had made a mistake. I had done this as an experiment - to see if not knowing his true path would divert the eviller twin from a destiny no child deserves. But I had forgotten one thing - how would I know? The only way I would know for sure would be if I heard, when the twin had grown up, of some spectacularly dastardly evil man roaming the land and causing havoc all up and down the length and breadth of Ablet, and then i saw him and managed to recognise him as the young boy from all those years ago. Now I may not be the most sensible of men, " he held up an admonishing hand to check Ginger's derisive cough/ snort/ comment on the complete lack of sensibleness that Mad Pete had ever demonstrated " you don't need to say anything, Ginger McSporran, I may not be the most sensible of men but I can recognise my own shortcomings. Now, AS I WAS SAYING, I may not be the most sensible of men, but I didn't think that was the most likely scenario. If not for any other reason than I didn't fancy getting close enough to such a fiend to ask him for his baby picture. So I came up with an alternative plan.
"I collected up all the information I had about the baby and his parents, and I made a parcel. I wrapped it up in brown paper and I tied it with string, and I addressed it to myself. Then I waited. My plan was to take it up to the mountains, put it in some isolated spot, and wait for a chartless adventurer to come questing down the mountain. Then I would send them in to get it, and if they were honest, they would bring it out to me and I would know that the plan had worked. And if they were dishonest, well then they wouldn't, but they would at least be able to find out the truth about their birth and I wouldn't have to feel so decietful all these years.
"So that was my plan. But I had to wait an awfully long time to implement it, because for years after my retirement I couldn't go out walking - even around the Low Plains, forget the mountains! - I couldn't walk anywhere without being abducted by pirates. And as the years wore on I began to be afraid that I wouldn't get there in time.
"But about five years ago the pirates finally gave it up, and so I was able to go up into the mountains to find a place to hide the package. It took me quite some time to find those caves of yours, Ginger, but at last I did, just over two years ago, and I left the parcel there.
"I was surprised by how many adventurers went in there and never came out, I really was. But then Ethel found out for me what you were doing, Ginger McSporran, and how you were tricking them into forgetting the parcel. I guessed that any adventurer who would forget the parcel couldn't possibly be the right one. So I continued to go up into the forests and torment young men on quests into getting me my parcel.
"And now you've got it for me, Ralph the Timid. " Mad Pete produced the parcel and held it up. Ralph gazed at the brown paper wrapped object in the chartmakers hands. It was so small to hold so much potential for destroying his life as he knew it - if he was evil he could never go home. It would hurt his family's feelings so much!
"Well," said Ginger McSporran, slowly and gruffly. "I guess we'd better open it then."
Ralph the Timid peeled himself away from the window and came closer to look over Mad Pete's shoulder as he unwrapped the parcel. Ginger McSporran leaned in, nose close to the parcel, watching intently.
Mad Pete, with some difficulty, unknotted the knots in the string that had been tied so long ago. He unwound the string from the parcel and put it aside.Then he slowly unfolded the brown paper.
A terrible smell filled the air. It smelled like an ancient pepporoni, cheese and tomato sandwich which has been left somewhere damp for far too long and is now practically alive.
Which is curious, because that is exactly what was inside the parcel.
Ginger McSporran drew his nose back hurriedly. Ralph similarly recoiled. "Ugh!" he said. "What is it? How does that tell us anything?"
Mad Pete smiled, a sweet, sad, foolish smile. "I think, my friends," he said slowly, "this tells us we have the wrong parcel."


(Word Count: 32850)