I won’t put down all the conversation. I couldn’t follow all of it anyway, the things he ‘explained’.
And I still don’t know what I think of him.
He looked all right. He had on this white shirt with fringes on the cuffs.
Oh anyway.
I will make a note of the supper – it was – well, under other circumstances I’d have been fascinated, delighted. Not so much by the food, though that was delicious (it usually is, here). How it was served.
I thought Jotto was going to serve it, as he normally does if he’s around. But he sat down by Grem. Treacle was there too, with her spiky black hair brushed up spikier, and long gold earrings. (I was the only scruff-bag, in my now tatty dress from the Rose Room.)
Tall candles burned in globes of pale amber. By this light, up a strange little ramp I’d been wondering about, the first dish was drawn on to the table.
It was a big silver dish, with a fresh salad arranged like jewels by Jotto. But the dish was attached by a harness arrangement to a team of tiny black and white rabbits! I do mean tiny. They were each the size of a mouse. There were ten of them in all. They galloped forward and pulled up to a perfect finish. Then just stood there until a beaming Jotto, (saying ‘Aren’t they sweet?’) unharnessed them.
Then other dishes came in procession. Five blue hippos, about the size of kittens, brought vegetables. Ten black-necked geese, the size of sparrows, brought a train of hot sauces. Two very strong little tigapards, each as big as a blackbird, hauled up a large pie on a gold tray. Three fat mouse-size mice – that also looked like pigs (they had curly tails, and snouts – pouces?) brought a china castle of assorted nut-cheeses.
They all managed faultlessly, except for the tigapards, which, as soon as they saw us all, promptly sat down, and had to be helped lug the pie, by Treacle.
Once released, all these creatures ambled about the table, playing with each other, and accepting pieces of food, but only when offered to them. Well, one of the pouces (pice?) did drag a banana away behind the salt cellar, but never mind.
They really were lovely, these little animals.
When I asked, they told me, Venn told me mostly, that they’re not dolls, are quite real. They’d been bred, like the vrabburrs. ‘Not everything she did,’ said Venn, meaning his mother, ‘was dangerous.’
‘Where do they live?’
‘They have a big hutch and enclosure in the gardens,’ said Jotto. Grem added, ‘They’re taken in at night.’
The supper was relaxed. It was hard to be nervy and angry, with mouse-size rabbits playing kick-ball with a radish, and a miniature tigapard purring in your lap.
I did think, This is clever. I shouldn’t fall for this.
But I fell for it.
The wine was pink, in rose-amber glasses.
I heard myself laugh at something Jotto said. And then he, Venn, laughed. As if I’d said he was now allowed to.
I’ve wondered about him and Treacle. He’s grown up with her, seems fond of her. But she’s a wild thing, Treacle. She’s called that, they say, because she always liked treacle.
He doesn’t treat any of them like slaves. That says something about him. Maybe?
They all know each other. They know Jotto, though he was, obviously, always an ‘adult’, even when they were kids.
What was that like, growing up in this bizarre place?
He says his mother was close to him only when he was very small, and he remembers being two years old, because he has a clear picture of walking in the gardens with her, and she said to him. ‘You’re two, now, Venarion.’ And after that, she changed.
‘She didn’t touch me any more,’ he said, ‘she used to hug me before that,’ drinking the wine, seeming so casual, so I knew he wasn’t, it still distresses him. ‘She became cold and uncaring. I seldom saw her. Before, she used to read me stories. Once she changed, I had to read them myself. Grem would help me hold the books, they were so heavy.’
He could read at two years old!!
‘I bored her,’ said Venn, laughing again. ‘Well, she was a very clever woman. A scientist – what your Hulta would call a magician. She did all this. Made the rooms move, bred the animals – the cats with the plated skulls, the vrabburrs, these little ones on the table. She made other experiments. Grem’s hair, for example. And Treacle’s tears.’ (I wondered if they minded, but they didn’t look bothered.)
Jotto even said, ‘Don’t forget me.’
‘Yes, of course, Jotto, the most brilliant of all mechanical dolls. The other three, across the ravines – they weren’t so good. But Jotto’s magnificent, aren’t you, Jott?’
‘I am,’ said Jotto, ‘though I say it myself.’
‘In a way,’ said Venn, cheerful, smiling at the moon, ‘I’d say I was her experiment, too. After all, she made me, didn’t she, even though I’m only flesh and blood. Her son. So I think I was the least successful experiment of them all. The only one that didn’t work as it – I – was supposed to. Then anyway she got tired of all of us.’
He’d gently lifted up a pouce, and I thought he was going to dunk it in the sauce by mistake. But he realized in time and put it carefully back on the table.
After that, they changed the subject, all four of them, the way a family can do things like that, acting as one.
We played clever word games. Grem sang a very funny song about earwigs, and Jotto produced a flute and started the nightingales singing. (Some of the nightingales are clockwork too. Put there to ‘encourage’ the others.)
Later, Treacle and Jotto were running races. They were always neck and neck. And Grem strolled off to talk to the Gardener, who suddenly appeared like
