Mr Squash shifted on the settle that he single-handedly filled, and the aged black oak complained with an ominous creak. 

“Go on then,” said Philomena. “You promised to tell us why you fell out with Pyralia Skant.”

“I promised someday,” said Mr Squash.

“It’s someday now,” she replied, in the tone that makes even a sasquatch rethink his boundaries.

He sighed, adjusted his great, shaggy elbows, and fixed his eyes on the fire. The flames made citrine glints in his fur.

“Well,” he said. “If you’re to understand why I don’t get on with Pyralia Skant, you need to know what happened when the green children came to Hopeless. That was a long time ago – a hundred years, or more. Sebastian Lypiatt ran The Squid and Teapot in those days. Before his time the place had fallen into disrepair, but Sebastian turned it into the fine inn that it is today.”

He smiled at the memory.

“His best barmaid was Betty Butterow,” he went on, “Betty was one of those legendary characters that the island throws up occasionally. She and her husband Joseph Dreaming-By-The-River-Where-The-Shining-Salmon-Springs were the first islanders to meet the children.”

Philomena leaned in. 

“I’ve heard of Betty and Joseph,” she said. “Wasn’t he from the Passamaquoddy people? And you’re right – those two seem almost mythical.”

Suddenly interested, Tenzin, Reggie and Rhys abandoned their card game, and settled down to listen to the sasquatch.

Mr Squash nodded, and began his tale. 

“It was early winter,” he said. “Cold enough that even a sasquatch thinks twice about stepping outside. The fog lay in the hollows like it was hiding something.”

“That’s normal,” said Reggie.

“Not like this fog,” said Mr Squash. “This fog had intentions.”

He paused, lowering his voice.

“Pyralia was on the island. She’d arrived a month before, quiet as frost, asking strange questions about a legendary chest of bog oak and brass. You know how she can stir up trouble without even noticing. I felt her workings long before I saw her. The island felt somehow rearranged.”

Philomena shivered. This sounded all too familiar.

“One night,” Mr Squash continued, “I felt something shifting on the island, like a door swinging open. It wasn’t opened by me, and not one of my portals. I was pretty sure it wasn’t opened by any Hopeless hand, either. It was a slip, a weakening, as though someone was tugging at the weave of the island.”

“Pyralia,” murmured Philomena.

He nodded.

“She wasn’t trying to do harm. She never tries to. But she was unravelling something, unmaking a knot she thought ‘untidy.’ To her, it was housekeeping. To the rest of us, it was like a rip in the fabric.”

“And through that rip,” he said, “fell the children.”

“It was Joseph who heard them first. He’d been out doing something or other up on the Gydynaps.  At first he thought he heard Drury whining, as though he’d injured himself, but Drury  doesn’t speak, and he  certainly doesn’t glow.”

The pile of bones pretending to be asleep beneath the table grunted with indignation.

“Glow?” asked Rhys.

“Oh, only very faintly,” said Mr Squash. “Like soft green starlight.”

“They were tiny.  No more than six and eight years old, and green as new nettles. They were shivering in the cold, holding one another’s hands like they were the last things in the world they trusted.”

“And perhaps they were,” whispered Philomena.

“Joseph brought them straight to Betty,” Mr Squash continued. “He burst into The Squid and Teapot yelling for hot water and blankets. Sebastian Lypiatt nearly had apoplexy.  Not about the children, mind you, but that Joseph had tracked mud across his polished floorboards.”

Reggie snorted.

“But Betty took charge, of course she did. She wrapped them up, cooed to them, tucked them behind the kitchen stove. They warmed up quickly enough, but they never stopped looking terrified.”

He hesitated.

“They were afraid of the dark.”

“Children often are,” said Philomena.

“These weren’t,” said Mr Squash. “Not in their own world. But whatever it was that they’d fallen through frightened them worse than anything Hopeless could throw.”

Tenzin, who knew a thing or two about being dragged from his own world, swallowed audibly at that.

“Randall Middlestreet was the Night Soil Man at the time. He was the next to get involved. He’d found marks in the marsh. Not prints exactly; more like impressions. Shapes that didn’t belong. And a trail that stopped abruptly, and ended in thin air.”

Mr Squash tapped his knee.

“That’s when I knew where the children had come from. You know the Underland well enough, Philomena, and how it attracts other times and places to press against this island. The children must have wandered too far in their world, and Pyralia’s little ‘adjustment’ made the membrane too thin.”

“Like the babes in the wood,” Philomena mused.

“Maybe Pyralia didn’t notice,” said Mr Squash, darkly. “But my guess is that she noticed, and called it an ‘unfortunate side-effect.’”

His fur bristled.

“Children shouldn’t be side-effects. Not of anyone’s cleverness, at any rate.

“What became of the children?”

Philomena held her breath, not really wanting an answer. 

Mr Squash sighed.

“They lived,” he said gently. “For a while, anyway. Betty and Joseph cared for them as their own. Betty even taught them hopscotch. Joseph told them old Passamaquoddy stories so they wouldn’t be frightened at night.”

“And then?” Rhys asked.

“They grew weaker,” said Mr Squash, voice low.

“They belonged to a world that wasn’t this one. Their greenness faded. Their shadows grew thin.”

There was silence in the snuggery.

“When the mist rose one midsummer morning,” he said, “they walked into it. Together. Hand in hand.”

“They never came back,” whispered Philomena.

“Not to us,” said Mr Squash.

“But I think –  I hope –  they found the gap Pyralia made, and went home.”

Philomena blinked away the ache behind her eyes.

“And you’ve avoided Pyralia ever since?” she asked softly.

Mr Squash huffed.

“Yes,” he said. “She’s dangerous when she’s tidying. She straightens things that were never meant to be straight.”

“And that’s why you left when she returned to the island?”

“Oh yes,” said Mr Squash. “When I felt her energy again, all crisp and chilly like a librarian rearranging the universe, I thought it best to return to the Pacific North-West for a while.”

He scratched his chin.

“And then,” he admitted, “I missed this place. I missed you all. Even the ghosts in the privy. So here I am.”

Philomena reached out and patted his enormous paw.

“Thank you,” she said. “For trusting us with the truth.”

The fire crackled. Snow tapped at the window. And for a moment, the entire inn felt warm as a heartbeat.

–

Authors note: Readers should feel free to trawl the Vendetta archives for the many tales of Sebastian Lypiatt, Betty Butterow and her husband, Joseph, and also the mysterious chest of bog-oak and brass.