The 13.5 Lives of Captain Bluebear Read online

  I also learned all I needed to know about daily shipboard maintenance: how to repair planks, how to remove sea-snails from the hull (and cook them in a seaweed bouillon), how to keep my feet in a heavy sea, how to lower a boat, throw a lifebelt, stand my turn as masthead lookout. Within a year I was a fully trained, able-bodied seabear and no longer threw up in rough weather.

  Seaweed cuisine

  The Minipirates gave me plenty to eat, mainly seaweed and skinny little fish. They knew over four hundred ways of preparing these dishes, which ranged from ‘seaweed natur’ to a highly sophisticated soufflé, and I was privileged to sample every one of them. My present aversion to seaweed may possibly have stemmed from the Minipirates’ dietary habits.

  Say what you like about seaweed: it contains all the important vitamins and proteins a little bluebear needs in order to grow – too many of them, perhaps, because I grew at a speed that began to make me – and, more particularly, the Minipirates – uneasy. Having at first been smaller than my rescuers, I was the same size as them after a year. After the second year I was twice as big, and after four years my height was five times theirs.

  It can well be imagined that my rapid growth made a very unpleasant impression on sea rovers whose small stature endowed them with a natural mistrust of all things big. After five years on board I had become so large and heavy that I threatened to sink their ship.

  Although I failed to appreciate it at the time, the Minipirates did the only right thing by marooning me on an island one day. I’m sure they didn’t find it easy. They gave me a bottle of seaweed juice and a loaf of home-baked seaweed bread to see me on my way. Then, moaning and groaning, they sailed off into the sunset. They knew that life without me would be considerably more tedious.

  Marooned

  As I sat there, naked and forlorn on the shores of a lonely island, I thought about my predicament for the first time. It was, in fact, the first time I’d ever thought at all, because I’d never managed to form a clear idea about anything in the eternally noisy atmosphere of the Minipirates’ ship.

  I’m bound to admit that my first attempts at cogitation were far from unfathomably profound. The first thought that came into my head was of hunger, the second of thirst, so I greedily wolfed the seaweed bread and hurriedly drained my bottle of seaweed juice. My tummy was promptly pervaded by a pleasant glow, as if someone had lit a little camp fire inside me. Accompanying this sensation was a certain self-assurance that encouraged me to take the bull by the horns and explore the island’s vast palm forest. This early experience may be said to have become a maxim that has governed all my future lives. However great the challenge, it’s easier to overcome with a decent meal inside you.

  Darkness

  Then came nightfall and, with it, darkness.

  Darkness … Until then I hadn’t known what that was. It had always been light with the Minipirates, even at night. Their ship was brilliantly illuminated as soon as dusk closed in. Any Minipirates’ vessel is a miniature sensation at night. It looks like a tiny floating funfair, sound effects included, because Minipirates are terribly frightened of the dark. They believe that night is the time when Hobgoblins come to feed on sailors’ souls, and that those evil spirits can be kept at bay only by lavish lighting and the maximum possible output of noise. So my former shipmates not only illuminated their vessel with lanterns, flaming torches, strings of coloured fairy lights and small fires, but let off one signal rocket after another and created such a hellish din by singing, shouting and hammering on iron saucepans that no one could get a wink of sleep. Sleeping was done in the daytime. As for Hobgoblins, we were never troubled by them.

  Fear

  So it was dark for the first time. And with the darkness came a novel sensation, one that had never afflicted me before: fear!

  It was a very unpleasant feeling, as if the darkness had infiltrated my body and were flowing through my veins. Having swayed so soothingly in the wind only minutes before, the lush green palm trees had now become black figures lurching towards me with their huge paws raised in menace.

  Floating in the sky was a thin crescent moon, the sight of which surprised me because I had never noticed it in the permanent blaze of light on board ship. The wind rustled in the fronds of the palm trees and transformed them into a throng of whispering ghouls that hemmed me in, ever closer, and groped for me with skeletal fingers. Despite myself, I suddenly thought of the Hobgoblins.

  I strove to suppress the thought, but it was no good. I missed the Minipirates’ hysterical hubbub, their raucous voices and, above all, their extravagant lighting – the lighting that kept Hobgoblins away. I had reached the absolute nadir of my young life: naked and alone, I was marooned in the midst of a dark, unfamiliar forest and beside myself with fear. All at once I sighted a very alarming phenomenon among the palm trees: serpentine threads of green light, quite far off at first but quickly drawing nearer. I also heard a nasty, high-pitched electric hum and an occasional hollow, mocking laugh of the kind uttered by the horned creatures that live down well shafts. This, so the Minipirates had told me, was how Hobgoblins advertised their presence.

  From the

  ‘Encyclopedia of Marvels, Life Forms and Other Phenomena of Zamonia and its Environs’

  by Professor Abdullah Nightingale

  Hobgoblins. These beings fall into the category known as Universally Reviled Life Forms [see also →Spiderwitch, The, →Troglotroll, The, and →Bollogg, The]. This includes those creatures resident in Zamonia and its environs whose deliberate policy it is to spread panic among their contemporaries and, in other respects, to indulge in antisocial, disruptive and killjoy behaviour of every description. Of repulsive or even terrifying appearance, Hobgoblins usually operate in packs, making frightful noises and singing horrific songs. They delight in alarming utterly defenceless creatures.

  My first tears

  It was all too much for me. I felt a hot liquid well up inside my head. My eyes, my mouth and nose became filled with it, and my only recourse was to yield to this internal pressure: I wept. I wept for the first time in my life! Fat, salty tears plopped on to my fur, my nose ran like a tap, my whole body shook in time to my sobs. Everything else was secondary now. The encircling Hobgoblins, the darkness, the fear – all were subordinate to this mighty outburst of emotion. I wept and sobbed, stamped my little hind paws, bawled at the top of my voice. Like two miniature cataracts, the tears continued to stream down my fur until I resembled a wet floorcloth. I broke down completely.

  Then calm descended. My tears dried up, my sobs subsided. A reassuring sensation of warmth and weariness overcame me. My fear had vanished. I even plucked up enough courage to raise my head and look the Hobgoblins in the face. They were hovering around me in a semicircle, six or seven flickering figures outlined in ghostly light, their arms and legs dangling limply like uninflated inner tubes. They stared at me in silence for a while, almost touched. Then they started to applaud.

  I won’t mince matters: the Hobgoblins were a thoroughly unpleasant bunch. Their slithery movements, the slight electric shock you received when they touched you, their high-pitched, sing-song voices, and, above all, the dubious pleasure they derived from terrorizing helpless fellow creatures – all these attributes were utterly repulsive. There was also the smell of rotting wood they gave off (it was associated with their sleeping habits) and, more particularly, their disgusting form of nourishment. But more of that later.

  Yes, the Hobgoblins really were the end, but I went with them notwithstanding. After all, what choice did I have?

  I didn’t understand a word they said – or sang, whichever – but I quickly gathered that they wanted me to accompany them. In view of my predicament I felt it was the wisest policy, though heaven alone knew what they would do to me.

  They glided ahead through the forest, gracefully flowing around every obstacle like water snakes composed of green light. If their path was barred by something too big or solid – a boulder, for example, or a fallen
mammoth tree – they simply slipped straight through it as if it were no more substantial than mist.

  I found it quite difficult to keep up with them, but they politely paused every now and then and waited for me to catch them up. They spent these intervals singing some rather awful songs. The tunes themselves sounded so sinister, I was glad I couldn’t understand the words.

  The forest graveyard

  I was utterly exhausted, my fur full of leaves, thorns and little twigs, when we finally reached our destination: a large clearing in the middle of the forest. Rotting away in this clearing were the hollow trunks of hundreds of huge trees inhabited by hundreds or possibly thousands of Hobgoblins. For the time being, this graveyard for forest giants was to be my home.

  IT VERY SOON became apparent that the Hobgoblins had not taken me in out of the goodness of their hearts. That same night they indicated in sign language what they expected of me: I was to weep for them.

  From the

  ‘Encyclopedia of Marvels, Life Forms and Other Phenomena of Zamonia and its Environs’

  by Professor Abdullah Nightingale

  Hobgoblins [cont.]. Hobgoblins originate when a will-o’-the-wisp [Lux Dementiae] comes into contact with a pocket of Zamonian graveyard gas. Graveyard gas is an evil-smelling vapour that rises from decaying coffins when the soil above them has not been tamped down sufficiently to render it gasproof. Will-o’-the-wisps come into being when glow-worms are struck by lightning and go fluttering on in an electrically charged condition. When a will-o’-the-wisp encounters some graveyard gas – as it usually does, for obvious reasons, above a public burial place – the gas molecules and light particles combine to form that ill-starred invertebrate commonly termed the Hobgoblin.

  It’s clear that nothing good can come of such a combination. If you don’t have a spine you don’t need a nervous system, and anyone devoid of nerves is devoid of feelings as well – hence the Hobgoblins’ overpowering interest in the emotions of other living creatures. People always covet what they themselves do not possess. Once you know how Hobgoblins come into being, you aren’t surprised that they should take such an inordinate interest in unpleasant emotions like fear, despair, and sorrow. To a Hobgoblin, a crying fit – in other words, something in which all these emotions are present at the same time – is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

  The Hobgoblins

  The Hobgoblins ushered me over to a huge, mouldering tree trunk that lay there like a toppled factory chimney and thrust a few leaves under me so that I could sit down on it in comfort.

  The clearing was steadily filling up with Hobgoblins. Humming to themselves, they glided through the trees in search of their seats.

  It was weird to see so many hundreds of them lighting up the arboreal graveyard. Together they generated a dome of green light that overarched the scene in a ghostly manner. Nervous whispers and giggles filled the air until the last of the Hobgoblins had found seats and focused their gaze on me. Then silence fell.

  I sensed what was expected of me, but somehow I wasn’t in the mood. I was feeling thoroughly uneasy, but not uneasy enough to cry. I felt I hadn’t a drop of liquid left inside me, and my mouth and throat had never been more parched. I did my best, though. I pulled all kinds of faces and tried to squeeze out a tear, but to no avail.

  I tried sobbing, but all that emerged was a hoarse croak. The Hobgoblins were becoming restive. Some of them broke into a low, ominous sing-song, and the air crackled with little electrical discharges. I rocked to and fro for a bit, as if racked with sobs, and rubbed my eyes to start the tears flowing, but my movements remained wooden and contrived, and still the tears refused to come.

  Several of my audience rose from their seats. There was a universal hiss like the sound of gas escaping from a fractured pipe. One or two Hobgoblins glided from their tree trunks and came slowly snaking towards me, clearly with evil intent. I tried self-pity. I reminded myself that I was a little, naked, abandoned, very hungry bluebear, that I had no parents, no home, no friends. I thought of my happy times with the Minipirates and of the fact that those days were gone for evermore. I felt I was by far the most pitiful, forlorn, hungry little blubear in the whole world, the most pathetic creature that ever … And at long last the tears started flowing!

  And how they flowed! They poured down my cheeks in veritable cascades, inundating them with salt water. They spurted from my eyes, ran down my nose and trickled over my lips. I emitted heart-rending sobs, threw myself on my tummy and hammered the hollow tree trunk with my little forepaws, so hard that the forest rang with the sound. I lashed out with my hind paws and tore at my short fur. I crouched on all fours and howled at the moon like a little, homesick puppy. It was a first-class crying fit, far better and more prolonged than the first.

  And then, quite suddenly, it was over. I sat up, sniffing, and wiped away the last of my tears. Seen through the moisture that veiled my eyes, the Hobgoblins looked weirder than ever. They were sitting quite still, staring at me.

  Utter silence.

  I gave a final sniff, ready for anything. Whatever they did now – eat me, or whatever – I felt strangely indifferent. A Hobgoblin seated on a tree trunk at the back began to applaud, half-heartedly. The others continued to sit there without moving. A second joined in the applause, then a third and a fourth, and suddenly, as if in response to a secret word of command, they all stood up and applauded till the forest shook. They uttered shrill cries of delight and whistled on their thin, ghostly fingers. Many picked up branches and beat a rhythmical tattoo on the hollow tree trunks. An incredible din arose. Flowers were thrown in my direction. Here and there a Hobgoblin shot high into the air like a green flare. All in all, those habitually unemotional creatures gave an amazing demonstration of delight. It rather moved me, I must confess.

  There’s no other way of putting it: I had literally become a star overnight. Although I wasn’t paid any money (I didn’t even know that such a thing existed), the Hobgoblins remunerated me for my lachrymose performances with food. Nothing special, mainly nuts, berries, bananas, and an occasional fresh coconut washed down with spring water, but more than that I didn’t need in those days. My hosts had very soon grasped – Neptune be praised! – that I wasn’t their peculiar form of food. The fact was, they lived on fear. I knew from the Minipirates that Hobgoblins glide across the sea at night in search of ships whose crews they can terrify with their weird singing. Once they’ve succeeded, they suck in the fear like milk through a straw.

  My fur used to stand on end when I saw those diaphanous spirits return from their nocturnal raids glutted with fear, plump and bloated like deep-sea sponges. At first they wanted to take me with them on their gourmet excursions, but they dropped the idea when they saw I couldn’t walk on water.

  Despite my initial abhorrence of the Hobgoblins, I have to admit I enjoyed my evening performances more and more as time went by. The stage fright beforehand, my steadily improving technique, the thunderous applause at the end – I became positively addicted to it all. I found it ever easier to burst into tears (and I can still do so today, on the few occasions when tears become necessary for histrionic purposes).

  I had only to think of something sad, and I was off. I enriched my programme with dramatic crescendos and pauses for effect. I could run the whole gamut from faint sighs to despairing sobs and frenzied paroxysms of weeping. I learned to synchronize the rhythm of my sobs with the melody of my pathetic cries so perfectly that miniature symphonies resulted. I could turn up the volume of my screams until they attained pinnacles of hysteria, to relapse a moment later into deep valleys of snuffling lamentation. Sometimes I would subject my audience to intolerable suspense by blubbering almost silently to myself for minutes on end, then suddenly howl like a homeless seal pup.

  Stardom

  The Hobgoblins were putty in my hands. Their ovations grew louder, longer and more enthusiastic every night. They almost smothered me with flowers, wove wreaths for my brow, showered me with berrie
s and other fruit. No wonder I began to enjoy my role more and more. It was an intoxicating sensation to stand behind the footlights and be applauded (even when the only applause was the Hobgoblins’ eerie wails and the only light their faint green glow). The reader should not, however, forget that I was still very young – this was only my second life.

  I soon became notorious for my star performer’s airs and could sometimes be as temperamental as a prima donna. If my audience failed to applaud frenetically enough, I turned sulky and left the stage without giving them an encore. Many were the nights I tormented the Hobgoblins by feigning a headache and refusing to appear at all. I became rather loathsome – almost as loathsome as the Hobgoblins themselves. I grew more and more like them, in fact. I started to imitate their eerie voices and hum their songs. Having at first insisted on sleeping by myself in the open, I later joined them for the night in their hollow tree trunks. I snuggled down among the humming spirits and dreamed their gruesome dreams. Before long I began to smell, like them, of rotting wood. Sometimes I also glowed a little in the dark because their luminous gas had lodged in my fur. I even made several vain attempts to walk on water, so as to be able to accompany them on their forays. On one occasion I almost drowned in a forest pool.

  I myself was completely unaware of how hard I was trying to become a Hobgoblin. It’s quite natural for a young person to want to be like other people. The worst of it was, I’d clearly reconciled myself to spending the rest of my days on the Hobgoblins’ island.

  A horrific reflection

  One evening, when I was making yet another attempt to walk on water (I had taken to using very shallow pools for experimental purposes), I saw my own reflection in a big puddle. I not only caught myself aping the Hobgoblins’ slithery movements but uttered one of their frightful, bleating laughs. The ripples on the puddle made my limbs undulate like a Hobgoblin’s. I was appalled.