Not two minutes later, Philbert found himself in the great room of Gusly’s sprawling palace, wrapped in a blanket and plopped into the depths of a well-cushioned chair holding a steaming mug of cocoa and facing a roaring fire. Mullaby was given similar treatment but deposited on a small cushion upon the floor.

Surrounding them in a cramped and over-furnished room, Gusly’s guests peered at them over their plates and mugs with conspicuous curiosity, these odd travelers arriving unbidden and unannounced after dark. Many were clearly farmers, and a very pretty plumpin sat so close to Gusly that Philbert imagined there must be more to the story. There were also a pair of plumpin acrobats that Philbert recognized from last season’s tour through the Hillocks, a boat captain just arrived from the Hogwash, and an obviously well-traveled plumpin wearing wooly shorts, a tweed waistcoat and oversized spectacles affixed to his ears with bits of twine. They had no lenses. Lastly, sitting far from the fire in the shadows of the corner of the room, two mean-looking plumpins, bare-chested and wearing leather breeches, bearing many scars and glaring around the room. One was missing his left ear, the cropped remainder twitching on his naked dome like an antenna. Though ostensibly at rest, they bulged with muscles that Philbert wasn’t sure his body even came with. Gusly introduced them as Lop-Ear and Scud, and Philbert did not have to ask who was who.

“Fellas,” Gusly was telling his guests. “This right here is the finest toadstool farmer in all the land. Philbert Philbert. Got a nose like a pig and eyes like a brandyhawk, but, more’n that, he’s got the sense.” Gusly leaned in close, letting the firelight play across his face and lowering his voice to a dramatic whisper. “Like a feelin’. By rights, it’s almost uncanny, I tell ya. He knows things, this one. Born toadstool farmer, this one.”

A few soft ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ bounced around the room as Philbert cast his eyes about after them, nodding here and there, raising his mug in what he hoped looked like an ‘aw shucks’ expression of polite embarrassment and nothing too self-satisfied. Mullaby, on the other hand, was face down in his cocoa and could not be bothered to look at much else.

“And what about this little feller?” Gusly asked, prodding at the small plumpin with his toe. Mullaby looked up at Gusly, wide-eyed and covered in cocoa foam. Philbert spoke for him.

“This is my apprentice,” he said. “Mullaby.”

“Well, I’ll be! An apprentice!” Gusly laughed and clapped Philbert on the back just a little too hard. “This I would like to see!”

“We’ve only just begun,” said Philbert. He looked down at Mullaby, who met his eye with an unspoken question. “But I’d say we’re off to a pretty good start.”

“That would mean you have toadstools with you now?”

The well-traveled plumpin was peering down his nose and through his empty spectacles at Philbert. There was a familiar hunger in his eyes and he licked his lips as he spoke. Up close, Philbert could see that he was also an older plumpin, his grey skin paling and thickening, piling around the joints and drooping around the eyes. His wild foraging days were likely over and he may not have had the pleasure of a good toadstool in quite some time.

“As a matter of fact,” Philbert said, “I have far more than I need right now and would be grateful for help eating them before they spoil.”

It was a lie, but the kind of lie that guests and new acquaintances are smart to tell. There are many ways to make a good impression—standing up straight, speaking with confidence, brushing your nose hairs and rinsing your ears—but few were as surefire and straightforward as simply giving people stuff. And by the general reaction in the room, Philbert had not miscalculated.

He opened his toadstool sack and rummaged around for some of the best finds while Gusly brought out extra plates and for the next few minutes the only sounds to be heard were the contented sounds of munching plumpins.

“Oh, it has been such a long time since I’ve had toadstools so fresh,” said the well-traveled plumpin, who had by now identified himself as Professor Thomble, though he declined to explain to anyone what a professor actually was. “I thank you.”

“You’re mighty welcome,” said Philbert.

“Yes, thank you.” The voice was Nolly’s, who, with her partner Jarles, tumbled and leapt through the Hillocks as a sort of traveling show, accompanied by a trio of plumpins discovering the fundamentals of music at what was agreed to be an unsatisfactory pace. Philbert found her quite fetching, however, and devoted considerable brainpower over the course of the evening to determining the precise nature of her relation to Jarles. Without success and without, of course, simply asking.

“Well, you’re extra welcome, Nolly,” Philbert said, clocking Jarles for any reaction but the plumpin was lost in the delicious ecstasy of a buttered bolete and paying no attention. This, he thought, could be a good sign. “Didn’t I see you last year, up north a bit? You did the flippy spinny thing on the tall Bramble because the crowd was all...”

“To distract the audience!” She laughed. “A desperation move, I’ll admit. But y’all were about to eat the band!”

“I don’t know about that, but I can’t say they wouldn’t have deserved it,” said Philbert. “I’ve heard music before, and that wasn’t it.”

“And where have you heard music?”

It was the captain’s turn to speak up, peering darkly with one good eye, chin tucked into the high collar he wore around his neck. There was no jacket or shirt to go with it, as the plumpin had apparently commandeered the collar and cuffs of an old uniform jacket and discarded the rest. If nothing else, it reflected a certain clarity of desire and aesthetic certitude usually reserved for the very young, the very old or the very insane. His voice was nasal and thick, with an air of authority that Philbert could imagine ringing out across the deck of his ship, cutting through the roaring rains.

“I’m sorry,” said Philbert, “but I don’t believe I caught your name.” He would be lying again to say that he wasn’t feeling at least a wee bit intimidated by the baleful milky-eyed stare of the captain, but Gusly’s home and Nolly’s presence imbued in him a nubbin of courage he’d not expected. He fixed the captain with a stare of his own and waited for a reply, leaning away almost imperceptibly as the other plumpin leaned in.

But as the captain unfolded from the recesses of his chair, the firelight dispelling odd shadows and smoothing the crags in his face, Philbert saw he was smiling.

“I apologize,” the mariner said. “I meant nothing by it. It’s the tone. Captain’s voice. Not too nice is it?” He gave a gravelly chuckle that seemed to heave out of his throat in guttural stops. “What I mean to ask is where can I find music in this place? I miss it so.”

Outside of a penchant for singing, plumpins have never been particularly musical creatures and there exists no record of any sort of instrument or style unique to their people. However, some plumpins have been known to derive great satisfaction from striking rocks with other rocks for hours on end and some observers suspect that they are discovering rhythm.

And so the captain told his story.

“It was the year the Hogwash jumped its banks. Washed away I don’t know how many farms. Plenty of pigs and plumpins both. Most just got swept out of sight, lost under the water and the foam. Don’t see ‘em or hear ‘em again. The unlucky ones found themselves caught in one of those infernal whirlpools, swirling and splashing and slipping under the water and scrabbling back up again, screaming for help until there’s no breath left.”

The captain paused for a moment, whether for dramatic effect or genuine reflection Philbert could not quite tell. If it was a performance, it was timed perfectly.

“I was only a lad. And out where I should not have been. Up in the branches of one of the old sentinel trees on Baggrat Bluff. Right where I told my mother I would not be. But I knew this was a once in a lifetime storm and, boy, was I right.

“I heard it first. Strange noises carrying over the sounds of the storm. Cutting through the waves and the thunder. For a moment, I thought it was the birds, but that made no sense. Not in that mad and blasty bluster. Then I thought it was the screams of the damned and the soon-dead, wailing into the winds that lifted them into a single great ghoulish chorus just for me. It scared me to my bones. But, more than that, I liked it. I couldn’t tell you why, but I leaned into that storm, the whole thing threatening to tear my ears out of my head as it blew past, straining to hear more. And I saw it. It was mighty, it was. The great looming hulk of the thing coming up out of the spitting mists. The grandest thing I’d ever seen: a ship of men.”

This time the pause was certainly for dramatic effect, as the captain looked out over his audience with an expectant gaze that was met only with empty stares and the soft squelching sound of Mullaby chewing on one of Gusly’s quilts. The captain slumped into his chair.

“Men?” he repeated. “Tall and stretched like? Easy to open? By my eggs, ya clods! The fuzzy-topped bastards with all of ‘em got ears like that feller there!”

The captain pointed to Lop-Ear, who gave no reaction as the entire room turned to openly stare at his deformity with what they now considered full permission.

“Right. But what does this have to do with music?” asked Jarles, slowly swiveling his eyes back to the captain.

“The music’s the whole bloody point!” cried the captain. “Right there on the decks! In the middle of the whole infernal storm! The captain and his men gathered around what they call a piano.”

He pronounced it carefully, though incorrectly, giving each syllable the respect of a full half note.

“What’s-“ Philbert started to ask.

“No idea!” said the captain. “But they beat that thing with their fists and it made the most beautiful noises and they laughed and they held each other close as they planted their feet and sang into the gale. I knew then, what I wanted to be.”

“A piano?” snarled Lop-Ear, clenching his fists and showing the spiderwebs of white scars on their knuckles. “I betchu make some right fine music, don’t ye?”

“Well, I…” The captain suddenly seemed to somehow lose his balance sitting down, squirming and shifting and threatening to slide right off his chair. But before he could stammer through a response, the pretty plumpin next to Gusly rose to her feet.

“I think I’ll be turning in,” she said, turning to Gusly.

“We won’t be much longer,” he said.

“You take your time.”

“Wait up for me?”

“I have to be up early,” she laughed. “Much to do yet.” And so she gave Gusly a kiss on the cheek and made her polite goodbyes and then disappeared into the labyrinthine recesses of Gusly’s home. Gusly smiled after her and then turned to the group.

“Now enough of the nonsense, you two,” he said, dropping his voice a full register and fixing his eyes on Lop-Ear and the captain. “There’s serious business to attend to and she’s already taken care of more’n half of it for us. We head out tomorrow.”

“What?!” cried Philbert, looking around at all the faces suddenly grave and serious. “But I just got here!”

“And just in time,” Gusly said, “to enjoy a hearty meal and take your sleep under a real roof before we set out in the morning. Now listen close.”