Peter & Max - Bill Willingham [31]
And then Squire Peep spoke for a long time, and slowly a bold plan took shape, and it began to dawn on Max that their daring scheme would afford him many opportunities to set a few things aright.
In which Peter has a visit
with a beast and a witch,
but doesn’t stay for tea.
IN PAST YEARS, ONCE EVERY YEAR, PETER WOULD travel down to the city to play in the Remembrance Day orchestra. Remembrance Day was Fabletown’s biggest holiday of the year, bigger than Christmas and New Year’s combined — which actually isn’t all that important to Fables, since the mundy world’s new year didn’t match up with any of the calendars they’d used in the hundred-plus worlds they’d come from. Remembrance Day was the one time of year when all of the refugee Fables, the world over, paused to lift a cup to the lands and the kingdoms and the homes they’d left behind, and to renew their promise to win them back someday. The main gala in Fabletown was a formal affair, at which there was much drinking and dancing, and for which Peter always helped provide the music. Other than that, he’d shown scant interest in either New York or Fabletown.
Now Peter was here on other business than the desire to entertain celebrants. He sat in the Woodland Building’s security office, the tiny one-desk room in which Sheriff Beast worked to uphold Fabletown law and keep the peace. It was a tidy office, and entirely utilitarian, filled mostly by the one old gray metal desk that was just big enough to hold a phone and a computer, and still leave a little room for work. Other than that, there were a couple of filing cabinets, one of which had a coffee maker set on top of it, two client chairs and not much else. It smelled of stale cigarettes, though there were no ashtrays in sight, or any other indication that its usual occupant smoked. Peter sat alone in the office, waiting for Beast to arrive for their scheduled appointment. Frost sat in his lap, locked inside its carrying case.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” Beast said, opening the door and stepping halfway into the room, “but I asked Frau Totenkinder to join us this afternoon. She’s coming now.” He was tall and heavily built, the sort of fellow who would have been called beefy in another day. And he was leading-man handsome in the same way that most Fable women tend to be “the fairest in all the land,” which loses much of its cachet when you have hundreds of such beauties crowded into such a small neighborhood. “I’ve gotten used to taking The Witch’s counsel in these sorts of matters,” Beast added.
There are plenty of witches living in Fabletown of course, most of whom reside on the Woodland’s thirteenth floor, which is reserved for those of a practitioner’s nature. But when one speaks of The Witch, there’s only one possible Fable he could mean — Frau Totenkinder, the Black Forest Witch. Beast stood half in and half out of his office, holding the door open, waiting to usher The Witch inside. Peter heard her before he saw her, from the dim tap-tapping of her cane as she approached down the hall, moving at little-old-lady speed. When she finally appeared in the doorway, Peter got up from his seat to move one chair over, so that she wouldn’t have to maneuver around him in the confined space.
When he’d originally sat in the first client chair it was a spitting image of the second — a simple wooden chair with a slat-supported back piece that curved around into both armrests. But now, as he rose from his seat, it had somehow transformed itself into a sturdy old high-backed rocking chair. Peter was stiffly formal as he shifted one seat over, and he cast a suspicious glance at the old woman who entered the room.
“Thank you for moving for me, young man,” Frau Totenkinder said, with