Instead, they all made efforts to spend as much time as possible with Bunny or me. Each clamored for private instruction and practical training from me. I ran through all the ideas I could glean from my own experiences, and not a few I stole from the shows on the Crystal Network, like having them extract a fragile glass bubble, intact, from a nest of horned weaselsnakes without getting bitten. As usual, each tackled the tasks in different ways. The Pervects still tended to go for the academic approach, but I was pleased to see that more frequently than ever they put aside the books and tried to analyze the situation in the real world. Bee looked at everything from a logistics and supply point of view. I thought his solution was the most elegant of all, setting out the weaselsnakes' favorite prey at a distance from the nest, and retrieving the bubble at his leisure. Tolk tried to make everything his friend, disastrous in the experiment with shield-hornets, but very successful in getting the local townsfolk to lend him enough ingredients to make a pan of scones. Melvine whined and complained a lot, but away from the distraction of others he buckled down. He really was as smart as Markie thought he was. His easy command of magikal force had made him lazy. Once he stopped blasting everything full force, he became more effective. The surgical precision with which he whisked the glass ball out of the snake nest was a beautiful sight to behold. I wished the others had been there to see it, or even evinced the most remote interest in hearing my recitation of Melvine's success.
They were scrupulously polite at meals, and each vied to take over Bunny's chores. It had escalated to the point where the Pervects had fought over cleaning the windows and ended up making new curtains for all of the inn's many casements. Melvine had made it a matter of honor to seal up every crack in the old building's walls, to the point where the inn was now virtually airtight. When the front door slammed, all of our ears popped. Tolk weeded the garden and 'healed' all the plants of black spot and wilt. The vegetables grew visibly larger after that. Bee inventoried everything not indicated as private property in the neatest handwriting I had ever seen. For the first time, I knew that Isstvan had left me nineteen and a third kegs of beer, four hundred and fifty-three bottles of indifferent wine and eight bottles of wine so good it should be saved for coronations, and three well-hidden casks of hard spirits. I was glad I hadn't known about all of that in my dipsomaniac phase. Bunny enjoyed the leisure to an extent, but told me privately she was getting bored having nothing to do. She spent more and more time each day communicating with her friends through Bytina.
The practical jokes had gone on in a minor way. I was sorry I hadn't given them my mother's lectures on beans up their noses, because each time I had forbidden a certain behavior, they came up with something else that didn't violate any of the previous rules. One night someone had short-sheeted all of the students' beds. Whoever the troublemaker was had learned to include everybody in the prank, including him or herself. When I forbade apple-pie beds, then everybody's clean clothes turned up tied in wet knots. That morning's exercises had been conducted in pajamas and bathrobes. At no time were my or Bunny's things disturbed, and nothing else of ours went missing. I suppose I could have put the annoyances down to the usual social interaction between young people, but I couldn't, not after the exploding ring incident.
The cold war also, I was glad to note, did not extend to guests. Tolk galloped up to the Troll and romped in a circle at his feet.
"Chumley, Chumley, Chumley, how are you? I'm so glad to see you! Where have you been? You smell like vanilla!"
"Crunch busy. Tolk good?"
"Oh, I get it!" the Canidian replied, wheeling on his rear legs and dashing the other way. "I'm fine. Skeeve's fun. Everything is exciting. I'm learning so much!"
"Good." Chumley lumbered up to me. He was maintaining his identity as the enforcement-Troll, Big Crunch. I had dropped in on him on Trollia to make the arrangements out of the hearing of my students so that Chumley could communicate his intentions to me in words of more than one syllable. Only Tolk was in the know about Chumley's alter ego. "All ready."
"Great! Everybody lower what you're doing, and come over here," I called. The Pervects descended daintily to the ground, setting the objects they had been levitating with equal delicacy. Melvine bounced his items off the wall and into the basket from which they had come, and floated over to survey Chumley at eye level.
"How's it going?" he said, though his voice squeaked. "I wasn't scared by you, no sir!"
I grinned to myself. He'd shot up eight yards when the Troll had come charging out of the woods. I covered my amusement with a loud a-HEM! Everybody gave me their attention.
"I want all of you to welcome this week's guest lecturer," I said. "Big Crunch is well known for his skills at protecting clients or a client's interests. He has guarded kings, business tycoons and leading entertainers. He's safeguarded everything from castles down to mud huts, and designed alarm systems that have foiled some of the best thieves in the guild. He's been a bouncer at some of the finest establishments throughout the dimensions." Chumley nodded modestly at this recitation of his accomplishments. "One of the most valuable lessons I have ever learned from him was how not to underestimate an opponent. It's easy to make judgements based on looks alone. A poisonous snake doesn't look like much more than a piece of angry clothesline, but the bite can kill. Naturally, Crunch isn't much for lecturing," I stopped to clear my throat. Chumley himself was an exceedingly literate gentleman. "His instruction will be a practical exercise. We have a whole building and the surrounding forest at our disposal. Gleep and I will keep a lookout for any approaching parties of Klahds so you won't be observed. Your object for today is not to be caught and, if possible, catch Big Crunch. If Crunch catches you, you have to come back here and stay in Bunny's sitting room until lunch time. If you catch him, the game's over. That's all. Got it?"
"Sounds lame," Melvine said.
Chumley reached out with a massive purple paw and patted the Cupy so hard he bounced off the ground. "Little man easy to catch."
"Oh, yeah, hairball?" Melvine sneered. "We'll see about that."
I pulled a whistle out of my belt pouch. "Everybody ready? At the signal, hide!"
PHWEET!
By the time I put the whistle back in the pouch, not an apprentice was to be seen in the courtyard. Melvine had vanished with a loud displacement of air. The Pervects split up and flew off in three different directions. Bee took off running in a zig-zag pattern. Tolk simply galloped into the trees. Chumley tipped me a wink of his big, moon-shaped eyes.
"Wish me luck," he said.
A book open on my chest, I lounged in the comfortable crook of a tree limb that overhung the north end of the road that led past the inn. I'd been there for over an hour. During that time I had seen most of my students creeping by, trying to skirt the central area of the woods where loud crashing noises seemed to indicate that Chumley was stomping around, seeking his prey. I knew better than to make an assumption like that, but I enjoyed seeing the intent looks on the faces of my students.
When I was a boy, my friends and I used to play "Demon In the Dark," where one person was chosen as the Demon, hunting down all the others and 'killing' them. Your heart pounds in your chest when you think you hear someone sneaking up behind you. It was hard not to shout out when the Demon grabbed you and hauled you away to wherever the holding area was, usually someone's cellar or a stall in a handy stable. We would always laugh hysterically when it was all over, as much out of relief from the tension as from the fact that it was a lot of fun. My students didn't seem to see the fun in playing the game with a real life Demon, or dimension traveler, as I now understood the philological origin of the word. All of them looked deadly serious, even frightened, as they tried to keep away from Chumley. He was making it easy on them, crashing around like a charging bull. From where I sat I could see a couple of the trees he had pushed down across the road, just shouldering his way through the undergrowth.