Jimmy, the Peddler, and the County Fair

(this is just an excerpt of a larger 11,000 word story written by myself and my cousin, with some content missing at both beginning, end, and a bit between as I tried to shrink it to meet the word limit, sorry if it doesn't make full sense but I loved this story so hey maybe it's worth the read)

The officer led the line, all the while keeping an eye on her strange compatriots. More than formidable in her sacred charge to uphold justice, she wasn't foolish enough to trust the two key witnesses behind her in the investigation of this strange crime. This wasn't the first time tales of this treacherous elf came up in her circles, and with every uncovered fact, the case became more personal. For personal reasons. She wrung her hands as one with poor circulation to keep warm in the cooling evening.

"You two, stay close to me," she commanded with an effortless authority. And with that the two fell in line following her determined confidence as she casually strolled to the fair.

Jim followed the officer as the foliage and trees gave way to an opening between two large tents side by side staked firmly to the dirt ground with old wood and rope. She walked along the narrow and short gap between them, silhouetted from Jim's view, and stepped into the fair. Jim approached with skepticism and caution. Behind him, the peddler puffed, not in very good shape for the minor-hike they'd just faced.

 A smile widened on Jim's face as he stepped into the opening and his fears were dispelled. To his left and right were braziers and the tents behind them were a grill hut & what may have been a crooked game of horseshoe, respectively. The officer stood with hands at hips and a look of dismay as she scanned the crowd for her suspect and prey. The peddler stepped into the fair with a more timid smile as he too enjoyed the gathering of such events - but his mind seemed elsewhere and not caramel corn nor candied apple could ease his troubled being.

There was a babbling hum to the scene. There were friends with drinks of hops and barley, couples with stuffed dolls and cheap jewellery, even animals (a scavenging bird pecking at the scraps or a country dog wandering the grounds) sharing the beauty of the summer‘s gather. There was a total engrossment to the crowd and Jim realized his officer friend was intently scanning the scene; it was then he would make his escape. Or he would have, if not for the shrill scream of what surely must have been an elderly lady across the fair's grounds, and a gasp amongst the fair goers surrounding.

"What, ho!" The officer called, parting the crowd as she strode across the glen, her once-fledgling resolve now increasing with every step. Recognizing her march was two short of a troop, she turned around to see Jimmy gazing at the milk maidens, the peddler paused in a sweaty rest beneath the strain of his pack.

"Come on," she sighed as she led them deeper into the festival, pulling Jim by the ear. Soon as she wandered on the officer realized the Peddler had vanished. There was a flushed look of exasperation upon the officer's brow as she scanned the crowd for signs of the peddler but nary a one was found. A shrill cry came from a direction yonder. "Follow me, boy!" She had resigned herself to a company of two. The peddler had never committed a felony or anything of suspicious activity and if he didn't want the assistance of the law then so be it.

Jim trotted along behind the officer as she weaved through the crowd of revellers. He could see spotted bits of confusion on their faces and surprise as they looked the officer up and down while she bolted through their ranks fast as a trained official can go. There was an unseen leash now between the officer and Jim, he followed her as a loyal dog follows its master, but if he was awaiting a treat it would not be coming.

There by the ferris wheel was an unconscious woman and a wee lass standing over her, tears in her eyes. "Waaaaaaah--- haha---- aaaaaaahhhh..." she cried and sobbed.

"What's wrong girl?" The formal but also soothing greeting from the officer Jim was following, for what reason he vaguely remembered. Then the bottle caps floated to Jim's mind. Yes, the bottle caps.

"That elf..." The girl sobbed staring at the ice cream cone in her hand that was all cone and no ice cream. Then Jim saw it - a splotch of vanilla chocolate swirl ice cream upon the dirt ground, besides the passed out mother. "When he... when he... he popped my balloooooooooooooooooon..." Sobs continued... "Then my... then my... ice cream fell..." The girl continued crying now after stammering out these words.

"Dreadful," The officer replied. "Your mother must have passed out from shock. This little mischievous elf is in for some spanking he is. First our peddling friend, then the priceless ceramics... and now this, worst of all. Which way did he go?"

But the girl was too distraught to reply, rather she cried and sobbed uncontrollably. Jim had to do something. Reaching into a back pocket (one of many pockets Jim fancies) he produced a minute daisy and handed it to the girl. Her sobbing stopped, she breathed a couple of deep breaths, she stared at the flower and reached a trembling hand to grasp it.

Then, dropping the ice-cream-less cone to the ground, she raised her hand up and pointed in the direction of the apple bobbers beyond the ferris wheel and past the game of darts.

The officer took off right away in a full on sprint. Jim stood and shuffled forwards on her heels. What they saw behind the apple bobbing tent was a different scene then expected. It was the peddler, looking possessed with the spirit of a thousand salesman who had been thieved confronting their culprit.

He had cornered the elf, pack open like a threatening cage, but the elf had a pack of his own that seemed to be bottomless in its bag of tricks. A tiny hand was reaching deep into the depths of that bag. Jim's eyes narrowed, his bottle caps were most likely within.

"Stop in the name of the law!" The officer cried directed at the elf, and his glassy eyes looked up at her for the first time.

The jig was up. Cornered, the elf would need more than a few tricks up his sleeve to evade this trio unscathed. Fortunately for the elf, he had more tricks than Jim could shake a stick at, much less poke anything with. The elf reached into his bag of pilfered prizes, an overstuffed bag though not nearly as comically large as the pack belonging to the peddler, and out of his bag he removed some magic dust and hastily threw it to the ground. The dust then exploded into a smoky mist, drawing more attention from the passers-by to the strange man-hunt, or rather elf-hunt, being pursued right in the middle of their very county fair.

When the smoke had cleared, the elf was gone.

"You fool!" The peddler yelled at the officer, calling her competence into question. "I had things under control before you two showed up." The peddler's already rosy complexion was now turning an entirely new shade of red, veins throbbing beneath his skin.

"You're welcome," the officer returned as she caught her breath.

"Excuse me?" The peddler was irate.

"There's no telling what this elf is capable of. You were lucky we arrived when we did," she motioned to Jim as the archetype of reinforcement. Jim puffed up his chest at such recognition. Rolling her eyes, the officer continued, "if we're going to catch this pointy-eared thief, we're going to have to coordinate our efforts."

The peddler was tired of being a team player, and stormed off in a huff, his immense weight carried on his back.

The officer sighed and turned to Jim. "Well kid," she said, "the night's yet young and I guess it's just down to you and me."

Jim nodded, feeling a touch more heroic than the moment before. All the same, the officer took note, wondering at Jim's motivation, or whether he was capable of such craft or guile. Jim wondered the same thing.

The fair continued much unaffected by the duo's mission, the same could not be said of the elf's mischief. By word of mouth, the two came to investigate a soup cook-off. The winner was a small boy with a pointy red hat and curly-toed shoes. His winning recipe was knocking peoples' socks off and more as they appeared to lose consciousness upon consumption.

The officer eyed the boy's food stall with suspicion. Jim just wanted some soup.

The peddler meanwhile had set up shop in a stall of his own, setting his own trap for the elf as he laid out his own rich trove of curiosities and oddities.

While she had her suspicions of the soup stall, more urgently needed was the care for the sickly. And so the officer began walking over to those who had suddenly collapsed next to the soup stands. She was turning them 'round and making sure they hadn't been choking or anything of a serious nature. A park official (one Bongo the clown) had come by her side and together they were dragging the fair goer's into a lazed pile slumped over and sitting upright unconscious leaning against a rather large oak tree.

Jim's mouth was salivating however. His senses inflamed by the intoxicating aromas of fresh herb soups. He walked into the large tent where the soup master's had their pots and cauldron's boiling and stewing away. Small flames beneath the pots some raging some merely simmering. A few of the fires were just embers now as the evening had worn on, and some of the pots were scraping to the dregs.

He eyed the winning cauldron from afar, seeing a charming little fellow dollop ladle after ladle to those eager to taste his soup. Jim was a connoisseur of sorts, and wanted to make sure he knew all the soups surrounding before making his way to the so-called "best" of the bunch.

He walked slowly past a pumpkin squash soup, sniffed the orange goo, and raised a small wooden bowl that had been in a stack towards the portly soup bearer. The man obliged Jim, giving him a generous helping, but seemed to be miffed when Jim walked away without exchanging coin. The tent took him somewhere back to his lost childhood and he meandered for awhile.

Jim slurped upon the pumpkin soup and also walked by a wild mushroom pot, simmering in a creamy white liquid with varying size fungi bubbling to the top then sinking to the depths. He smelled and he tasted and he eyed and he judged. After a walk around the soup tent Jim concluded they were all of very high caliber, and his stomach was filled with liquids and creams that satiated his ever-gnawing hunger. Then he came upon the award winning soup and paused.

Meanwhile the peddler had gone slightly mad at having been robbed his chance for sweet sweet revenge. But he was trying again, giggling and laughing to himself, chuckling as he arranged shiny objects all about his make-shift stall just by the soup tent. He needed bait, he needed something that would attract the elf's eye that had naught done so before. Close to his vest of course, close to his vest was something that he hadn't revealed to the diminutive cohort in their first or second encounter. Something of value that would be impossible to resist.

Some of the revellers were giving into the soup the elf had concocted of course, and were being conveniently herded into one place by a clown and police officer. What was the elf going to do then, pilfer the unconscious fair-goers or investigate this new curiosity? What was his end game and what were his motivations, or was he just an agent of chaos?

By now a large crowd had gathered in the lantern-lit pavilion as the elf and peddler, their stalls side by side, sold their wares. As if in a synchronized dance, the peddler's and elf's motions and transactions harmonized one with the other as their stalls slowly emptied.

The elf's soups sold like hot cakes and revellers dropped like flies left and right. The peddler sold in a frenzy, as no merchant before or since, his immense pack emptying with each transaction. He sold trifles for fortunes, relics for pittance, he cared not. The peddler was bent on one sole mission, the flitting elf across the way dancing from bowl to bowl, ladle in hand.

And there, encapsulated in time, stood Jim. Holding soup aloft and spoon in hand, he gazed at the thin broth that gave off a vapour of questionable scent. Against his better senses, Jim sought to savour the consumption of this supremest of soups.

The officer meanwhile made her way through the crowd to the action at hand. However, as the fair revellers began dropping left and right, she bit her lip and recognized that her civic duty was in tending to the unconscious.

It was at this time that the peddler unveiled his grand scheme. "Ladies and gentlemen!" He hailed. "Prithee lend an ear and gaze once more upon my curiosities! For while I have brought you incalculable treasures, priceless artifacts, and strange oddities, the greatest and unrivalled has yet to be presented!"

The peddler had magics of his own, and at that moment the surrounding lanterns dimmed, to the hushed silence of the crowd. Even the elf was paying attention at this point, as he scraped the bottom of the cauldron with his ladle.

After a pregnant pause, the lights shone on the peddler's stall and the peddler's stall alone as he shouted, "Behold! I present to you the Arc of Ossiriand!"

The crowd cooed in unison. There was no further need for words as the arc's beauty was evident to all. There on the picnic table in front of the peddler's stall stood a great chest, gilded and ornamented with precious gems beyond count, and great golden engravings above and beside. That such a wonder could fit even in the peddler's great pack was a wonder in itself.

As Jim gazed at his soup, so too did the elf gaze wide-eyed at the chest.

Recognizing his moment, the board set in his favour, the peddler began the auction of one of his greatest wares. The peddler began the bidding high, but there appeared to be many a high-minded reveller in the crowd and before long the bidding war was more intense than even the demand for the elf's soups.

Not to be outdone, the elf had a plan up his sleeve, for surely as before, he could win the chest for the price of a mere bowl of soup. He reached into the cauldron however to find it empty. No soup remained but for the bowl being savoured and unsullied by Jim. Before he could bring broth to lips, the bowl was burgled from him as the elf made his way with it to the shining table of the peddler.

 By this point a very reasonable clown posse had arrived on the scene to tend to the unconscious, freeing the officer once more to the matter at hand. Wiping the dirt off of her hands in satisfaction of upholding her civic duties, she joined a bereft Jim. "So, what did I miss?" She asked.

"My soup," was all Jim could whimper in return.

Back at the peddler's stall, the bidding war for the peddler's priceless chest was reaching dizzying heights. Navigating all of this the elf wove his way through the crowd to the peddler's table, in elf disguise and soup in hand.

"I'll give you a bowl of soup for it," the elf offered the peddler as he reached the front of the line.

The peddler's brow raised and lip curled, the only external change in disposition he made as the elf offered his brew.

"A bowl of soup is a high price," the peddler returned. "Perhaps you would like to inspect it yourself before making such a rich offer," he motioned toward the chest.

The elf inclined. He inspected it top to bottom, side to side, and inside and out. When he inspected the inside of the chest, the peddler then pushed him inside the chest, shut its ornate lid, and locked it from the outside.

The bowl of soup Jim had been sniffing moments before went flying as the elf vanished into the chest with a ker-thunk. The peddler had it closed and flipped a gold-gilded lock into place in the same motion, there were gasps amongst the crowd, and abandoning all the wares he had set the peddler grabbed the chest by its gold-gilded handle and took off.

Jim witnessed in slow motion the contents of the soup bowl flying. There were jaws dropping and music playing and Jim let out a feeble "Noooo" as the bowl spun around and succumbed to gravity's tow. Its contents splashing about the dirt Jimmy ran to the spot and dropped to his knees feeling on the grass blades for the sour-liquid he misguidedly had wanted to consume.