Fantastic Metropolis

Reaching the entrance to the narrow cave, Darktree squints within. A miserable hole, danker than one of his pockets, with a savage presence about it; some force is trying to dissuade him from approaching. What if this is the lair of a bear? Darktree knows that bears live on the coast; he has seen their bones, gnarled and bleached by the sun, littering many beaches. The bones of bears have unusual properties: they float on water and are flammable enough to scorch bread into toast.

Hannah has never been troubled by wild beasts; she leaps across the threshold, hooves slipping on the wet shale. Darktree follows. Without a doubt, there is something horrid moving in the cavern depths. He reaches to pull Hannah’s tail, to restrain her.

In return, she looses a remarkable fart—it lifts his tricorne hat off his head, revealing the horn of gunpowder beneath. This is the first time since leaving Africa it has been exposed to danger. The echo of the bumclap threatens to shatter the flask.

The savage presence rushes past Darktree, as if Hannah’s salute has frightened it beyond endurance. Horse and man are vaguely aware of limbs held together by knotted seaweed, a starfish hat and hollow eye sockets, a rictus snarl— too thin to be a bear.

“Fie!” Darktree holds his nose and bends to scoop his peeled hat. A slimy footprint congeals on the brim; the presence must have trampled on it as it hastened to escape. Darktree sniffs warily; this cave is hardly a suitable place to rest and recuperate. But Hannah seems settled, so he collects armfuls of ursine bones and lights them with the aid of a pinch of powder and a spark from his flintlock pistol. Not even the foamy fingers of the Atlantic have been able to snuff his trusty sidearm. Though a senile weapon, often forgetting to aim itself properly, it refuses to retire to an antique shop; it is happier with him.

The fire sputters like a new child, coughing shadows from its lungs and balancing unsteadily. It dries him with chiding tongues, until he is quite cowed. Bursting femurs heckle his cheeks.

When the flames outgrow infancy and can be left unattended, he jabs the hissing bones with his boot. In each limb he sees a snake waiting to be released. He is always noticing imprisoned items in other objects. No piece of furniture is safe from his rude alchemy. Once he made a Tompion clock into a full cutlery set; another time, he transmuted a bishop into a samovar. He is sane, but his talents are mad.

The cave soon fills with smoke; at the very back, a dimly perceived shape glitters. It is a boxlike contraption. The bear’s bed? Perhaps he will find teeth under the pillow, enough to turn into jewellery for the first woman he robs. He is determined to return to the road; though old, his boots suit no other occupation.

“Hannah!” Darktree breathes. He ventures into the deeps. Descending on the box, a wooden chest with a rusty clasp, he embraces it like a shy lover. “Treasure!” He is delighted; his troubles are finally over. Money will preserve him from work and washing.

Fixed to the lid with a skewer is a sheet of parchment. A thousand tides have faded the ink to the colour of oysters. It warns that a ghost protects the hoard, a vampiric spirit.

Darktree has been a pirate. In the seas bounding Madagascar, he was often challenged to a race by other corsairs. They gave him folktales in exchange for ginger and rum. These myths were a lateral way of showing a new pirate the ropes—and preserving him from the more prosaic cords of port authorities. One story concerned how a barbaric buccaneer, François l’Olonnais, always buried a comrade with his plunder, to keep it guarded by loyal spooks. Darktree was appalled to hear this; his own crew, also French, were his friends. He could never imagine himself being so cruel. Much better to spend the booty on muffins.

At any rate, there is no phantom attached to this chest now. Has it faded away already? Perhaps it has been eroded to shimmering sand by the waves. Or possibly it ran out with the bear.

Darktree’s moustaches dangle like pickled whips; they lash his chin as he juts it in a grimace. The lid is very heavy. It opens as slowly as a coffin. There is a glint of coinage, though not the sort of glint that blinds greed. Darktree runs his fingers through the discs, throwing some into the air—carefully enough to satisfy etiquette without endangering the total sum. This metal is tin, copper’s old friend. Hannah celebrates with an unconventional round of applause.

This is a disappointing find, but Darktree is happy. He loosens his belt and secures the chest to Hannah’s bridle. Then he urges her to drag it out of the cave and up a flight of steps hewn into the cliff face. He is certain the bear still watches them, concealed among the boulders that have tumbled from a ruined lighthouse.

Darktree moves his lips in a parody of panic. By the time he gains the summit, he is less concerned with insubstantial terrors. Hannah has fully dried his clothes with her bumbreezes. His mind wanders down into his belly. He has dined solely on mussels since escaping his equatorial detention. It is time for confectionery.

He is surprised to discover a road at the top of the cliff; a noisy fellow tramps toward him. The stranger rattles a huge sack of pots and pans; he is plainly a tinker. In an accent Darktree has seldom heard off a gallows, the fellow hails him.

“Will ye be having your kettles mended now, sir?”

Darktree frowns and draws his pistol.

Half an hour later, his treasure chest sports a crude set of wheels with spouts. Hannah’s task is made as easy as it is absurd. After twelve miles, Darktree removes a wheel to boil a wayside cup of nettle tea. His joints brew languidly in the pallid sun. He enters Clacton-on-Sea in style, seated atop his makeshift cart. Toads scatter in gelid haste. Without stopping to view the famous pier, he enters a bakery and casts a handful of coins onto the counter. “Many muffins,” he announces. “All flavours. Had enough of African Cakes, too hot for my palate. Dark voodoo crumbs…”

The baker holds up one of the discs. “What’s this? Don’t recognise it as legal tender. Smells fishy.”

Darktree is suitably haughty. “Those, my man, are pieces-of-seven. Not as valuable as pieces-of-eight, I grant you, but quite adequate for a supply of muffins. Jump to it, lubber!”

The baker continues to express reluctance. Darktree persuades with flint and powder. His pistol is his real tongue; he often wonders if he should let it carry out all that organ’s functions, stuffing cakes into the barrel, allowing it to return Hannah’s kisses. But he still prefers the old-fashioned way of eating.

He devours the muffins at a single gulp. The intimidated baker can only scowl at his digested profits.

Darktree twists his face and utters a cry. “What sort of cakes are sold here? These muffins are vile!”

“The recipe changed long ago. Pastries are no longer made the same way as in our childhood. Everyone knows this.”

“I have been abroad for thirty-five years. This is news to me. You must compensate me for this abomination…”

Afterwards, Darktree runs through the streets of the resort loaded with sticky doughnuts and chocolate éclairs. Losing the obese baker was easy in the general traffic. He chews as he evades justice; the problem with morality, as he sees it, is the savoury taste. He was born with a sweet tooth—his incisors are attracted to sugar like magnets to iron. Cratered and stained as a lunar eclipse, his smile.

He rents a room in a cheap hotel, sharing a single with Hannah. He registers her as his wife; the receptionist is blasé. Genuine wives are rare in Essex. After testing the tensile strength of the bed, he visits a local library and researches the correct synthesis for cakes. The old formulae are identical to the new; the difference must lie in the fonts used to print the recipes. Darktree conceals the book with the tastiest typeface under his hat, next to the gunpowder. He saunters through many markets, filching ingredients from stalls.

Back at the hotel, he mixes flour and beer in his hat and lights a fire in the grate. Soon traditional muffins are burning on the hearth. While he watches over them, he thinks of his unwitting love, the auburn locks of Lucy Reeves. She was the main reason he became an outlaw; she was also the lure which recalled him to civilisation. He went to sea to forget her, but succeeded only in circumnavigating her memory. At last, his erotic yearnings have been fully charted.

Will she have him, now he is moderately rich? This is not the first time he has known wealth; indeed, he inherited a large estate by virtue of his noble blood. That was another world, another Darktree. He chooses not to acknowledge his aristocratic beginnings. His first victims mocked his fussy fashions and rococo airs.

When the first muffin is ready, Darktree removes it from the grate. He cools it with a juggling trick. Bending forwards, he shatters a front tooth on its shell. His screams fan the flames. Harder than rudders, the muffins roll relentlessly in the embers, the balls of a syphilitic ogre. Darktree loads his pistol and blows each one to its component parts. The cake-souls are drawn to that circle of Hades where Mrs Beeton is forever tormented with a cyclopean garlic press.