Legally Dead - Part Three

Read Part 1

Read Part 2



It just about broke my heart seeing that "harlotous old gully dwarf," as Mama called her, setting up for the auction. All sorts of strangers were coming and going, and where they came from was anybody's guess. The Widow had to have been given notice of the auction weeks earlier, but the trial was only the day before. The evening after the trial, me and some of the other kids in town had our own little memorial service out behind the museum. We talked about Uncle Tas and all the things he had given us and tried to remember all his best stories. Inside the museum, the Widow and her out of town friends were throwing a party you could hear all the way to Crystalmir Lake. Some of the older folk in town came by to shake their heads and suck their teeth, but Tanis Halfelven noticed us sitting in the trees in the dark and he came over and sat down with us. I showed him my magic mouse ring, and he told us stories about Uncle Tas that we had never heard before.

But we just couldn't get over it, Uncle Tas being dead and all, and the Widow about to sell off all his things. It was enough to make a person misdoubt the whole human race. I wished I was a half elf, too, and I told him so. Tanis just smiled. He was a great comfort to us.

The morning of the auction was sunny and breezy. They had set out all of the stuff from the museum on tables on the lawn and everything had been marked and tagged with a number. There was a list of all the numbers and what items they went with, and the items were divided up according to nature and value: art, jewelry, magic, and so on. She was even selling all the most worthless junk, the chicken feathers and bits of twine and river pebbles, which was what Uncle Tas had always loved best.

In addition to the strangers, there were people from all over, more even than were at the trial, and there were horses and mules and wagons clogging up the lanes, and the folks were browsing through all the things and talking about Uncle Tas. I wandered around, looking at this and that and trying not to cry. The Widow had her a whole throng of security men with ropes and cudgels securing the perimeter to keep the kender away. I could feel their eyes on me the whole time.

Just about the time they were ready to begin, a mule broke his harness and got in among the tables. He knocked everything over and kicked and bawled, the Widow screamed like you wouldn't believe, and her security men jumped all over it wailing away with their cudgels until the farmer showed up to claim his animal. The Widow threatened to sue him for damaged goods. The farmer led the poor beast away and tied it to a tree, but by this time it was already noon and they still had to set up the tables and straighten everything out, so everybody went home to find some lunch. Mama brought onion and apple sandwiches.

I sat on the grass and ate my sandwich and watched them sort through the mess. Then I walked around and looked at the tables the mule had missed. There was one table that big piles of junk piled into crates with a single tag on them. The gnome saw me fingering the merchandice and came over to make sure I wasn't stealing anything. I asked what this stuff was and started rattling off like an avalanche until I clapped a hand over his mouth and asked him to slow down.

So he said it again, real slow and deliberate, like he thought I was thick in the head. "These items are being auctioned by lot," he said. "What you see is what you get so you can pick through it's junk mostly but as this is a kender estate there might be a rare treasure tucked away in all this so we call it a grab bag even though its a bag not a box." She showed me a few things and kept talking, mostly about himself.

He was from Mt. Nevermind, so I asked if he had ever met Uncle Tas.

And he was off and running again. "NoIdidnotbutitispossiblehecouldhave..."

I put my hand on his mouth again. "He would have been there three years ago," I said.

"ReallyIthinkIwouldhaveheardaboutthevisitofaherolikeTasslehoffBurrfootyouseeIamontheWelcomingCommittee..."

"He must not have made it," I interrupted.

"QuitepossiblethedangersoftheroadaremanyinfactIwasmyselfaccostedbyagangofruffianswhosoughtto..."

I wandered away and left him talking. Once a gnome got going like that, he no longer cared if anybody was listening. I rummaged through the items on several more tables until I came across a true treasure stuffed into an old pillow case. It was one of Uncle Tas' pouches, and it still had stuff in it! I wanted it like I've never wanted anything in my life, so I looked around until I found the Widow Burrfoot. She was setting up a table of magic items.

"Mrs. Burrfoot?"

"What?" she shouted, then she saw it was only me. She ran her hand through her hair and sighed as though at the tattered end of her last nerve. "What do you want, boy? Just look at all this stuff? How could one person have accumulated so much stuff?"

"He was special," I said. I held up the pouch I had found. "Can I trade you for this?"

"Sorry, no trades," she said. "Coin of the realm only, and beside, this is an auction, not a trading post. You'll have to bid on that if you want it."

"But it came from a grab bag," I said. "I don't want the rest of the stuff, just this pouch."

She rolled her eyes and sucked her teeth. "What have you got to trade?" she said.

"I'll trade you my magic ring that you've been wanting," I said. Her eyes lit up and I knew I had her.

I took my new old pouch and sat under a tree. Folks started heading back to the auction. I saw Palin Majere pass with his father and mother. Me and Palin were third cousins on my father's side. Poor old Caramon, he was taking things mighty hard. Him and Uncle Tas were about as good a friends as can be, they'd been through so much together. His nose was red and his eyes were swollen and Aunt Tika led him by the elbow as though he couldn't see where he was going. Things just wouldn't be the same around Solace without Uncle Tas. That was for sure.

You wouldn't believe the history that was in that pouch. There was a map of some rooms that was labeled Pax Tharkas. There was some writing on it that said Here is where Tanis found the sword of Kith-Kanan and I almost got eaten by a giant slug. That was fun! On another part of the map it said Here is where Fizban died. That wasn't fun. And next to it, in a darker ink, it said No he didn't!

The auction started and everybody finally realized why the Widow Burrfoot brought that gnome. He was the auctioneer. If ever there was a job suited for a gnome, that was it. I wish you could have heard him go.

I found all sorts of other maps. One was of part of Thorbardin and one was of Tarsis when it was beside the sea, back before the Cataclysm, which meant it was really old. Down in the bottom of the pouch I found an old piece of parchment rolled up around something. I unrolled it and saw that it was a page torn from a book, but the writing was so faded you couldn't read it. It had been wrapped around a pair of wire-frame spectacles. I put them on to see what they looked like, and all of a sudden I could read the writing on that old torn page. It was all about good dragons and looked like it had just been written.

Boy, wouldn't the Widow be kicking herself if she found out she traded a pair of magic spectacles for a dumb old magic ring that turns you into a mouse. I left them on my nose and walked around town to see what else I could see through them. For the most part everything looked just the same as it always had - the same trees, the same houses, same roads and shops. A few of the signs over the shops had other writing on them, which I guessed were the old names of places that had been painted over or weathered away. All in all, it was pretty boring and the spectacles, being so strong, were starting to give me a headache. Still, I thought, there might be something interesting at the auction, so I headed that way.

The place was pretty crowded and the auction was going good. You couldn't hardly find a way through all the wagons and mules and horses. The lawn was crowded, but there was also a good-sized crowd of kender sitting together off to the side, surrounded by security men. Off to the other side, there was a lone kender tied to a tree, and I figured they had caught him walking away with something valuable. He looked so miserable sitting there, without his pouches and a rope around his neck, I went over to see who it was.

When I saw his face, I just about fell over. It was Uncle Tas!


Part 4

© 2009 Jeff Crook