Fantastic Metropolis

12

Iphigenia Beagles was not wearing her gloves. Baron Taugenicht was still asleep. She picked up her shoes and stockings and limped towards the running water. Presently there was a path. It carried Iffy across the field to the dreaming river. A boat shaped like an elephant took her away from every day dry land and down to the sea. Great Boppy was drunk in a balloon fifty feet over head.

Hullo Iffy! He laughed good naturedly. Up here. Eh? What? Great Boppy help—cried the Empress at her wits end. Hurry!

He whistled for the anchor. Disappearing prairie elves sat irritably smoking Silent Man cigarettes. Colly the tree frog is eating skeeters in the half light of his second childhood. Shucks eight forty and his electric wife are propped up in the lifeboat.

Zari is that you? cried knickers. Zari was a feral girl knickers had found crashing in the dairy. Lovely and wild she would scamper round her dying robot Mother bare footed and howling with hollow laughter. What a beastly cartoon Colly. Where’s your sister? Boppy piped all hands on deck. As he lowered a rope ladder Shucks toppled over. A stingy sunrise tide gold plated every wave.

Iphigenia sighed. Nature often leaves her cold. Instinctively she thought of the Oriel diamond of Sir H. Rider Haggard never hidden by Trago the unblinking cluricaune at the foot of the square rainbow.

13

The balloon sank lower and lower. The elephant boat was being swept out to sea. I believe this is when Great Boppy jumped into the water. At the same time Iffy made several attempts to swim in mid air before gravity got the better of her. Just about then the ocean tried to upset the elephant soaking her black eyed Susan and waving away her hat. She looked up.

Iffy catch the ladder! Shucks eight forty leaned out of the basket and heedlessly dropped Colly overboard. True to his promise the plucky frog hit the bottom rung and hung on gasping.

I stopped the rescue short. Don’t cry Great B. Colly and Iffy are safe. Look I’m splashing melted butter on the circus popcorn again. See for yourself.

Black rain clouds clung to our modest and absent minded impurities as if they were alive. Zari flew by on an enormous ostrich called Dandelion. The desperation somehow only made it worse.

Dinner is cough in danger of growing cold. Covered with flour knickers announced the first course. Green tea and fortune cookies. Iphigenia dear this far from happy nineteenth century is drifting into the lost wilderness. Air up nine tenths. No wonder nobody knows I’m a ghost wrapped in a white cloth Iffy clapped her hands. Eskimos stuck scraps of fat into the fire.

It’s no use lying between truth and fiction. Three other silk balloons are gliding in on the breeze—pantomime bandits from the see through mountains—cried Shucks eight forty. Hang on!