Hallowe'en 2008 6

The Black King was nodding along to the redecoration ideas, at least until the remarks about the babies hit deep enough to strike brain.

"Hold on. Who is the father, or fathers?" he demanded.

Meanwhile, "Sneakily done," said the Knight. "Now, I wonder if it comes apart."

"What a boring question, my king. Isn't it obvious? Our little pawns -- they'll be excellent queens one day," quoth the Queen, moving closer and closer. She must have been joking. The malice in her eyes was pretty much at its normal level, after all.

The scythe did, in fact, come apart.

A short examination revealed that the top of the scythe was, as a whole, screwed on. The puzzlers took the thing apart in tandem, and the Joker left it to the Knight to check if there was something hidden in the hollow handle.

He did have longer fingers, it was true.

There was something, indeed, and it was a rolled-up piece of paper.

The Knight scanned it and passed it to the Joker. The paper said...

"Shiny and brown in the face,
Headstrong and tough in our cups,
Heavily falling from grace--
Found among apples and cats,
Fattening piglings and bears,
Squirreled away 'til we hatch."

And if it was still being looked at a few seconds later, by George, it intended to repeat it.

The Joker looked at the doombeast.

"It sounds like the acorns might be good for something, after all. Where'd you smell them?"

"C'mere, c'mere, I shall show you!" said the doom beast, recommencing bouncing. White Knight followed too. The animal headed for the food table (now, there was a surprise).

The Black King held his ground. "Oh, indeed," he said. "Of course, one might imagine that now we've spawned, my need of a consort becomes somewhat... diminished."

"Likewise," said the Black Queen, finally catching on to the fact that something was happening. "Thus, I take my leave of you. Goodbye, sweet prince -- or old king, as it were." Having said this, she thumped her way toward the party of three with accelerating steps.

Relief and disappointment checkmated each other in the Black King's eyes.

"We're not really married," he said quietly to one of the servants.

"I'd guessed that, good brother," she whispered back.

Well, at least the doombeast got to do something besides watching.

The acorns were scattered over the table as for decoration, in a few places forming clusters. When the Joker picked up a few from such a group and examined them, she found one that had a spades symbol drawn on it. She kept that one and was turning other acorns to see if there were more when she heard the Queen approaching, and wondered if it would have been a better idea to put the scythe in order first.

"I'm afraid I've wrecked your weapon, Your Majesty," the White Knight announced cheerfully, after pausing in his own search. It had been intended to come apart, of course, so a quick reassembly would have it as good as new. "Although you seemed to be faring magnificently without it. What have you there, good Jester?"

"Yes, I can see that, sir knight," replied the Queen of Hell, acknowledging the compliment with a sniff. "Perhaps you would be good enough to give it to me, then; and pray tell, what are you doing?"

The Joker held the acorn up, turned so the Knight (and presumably the queen) could see the symbol, commenting, "Playing a game, I think."

"It seems there is more to this room than meets the nose," the Knight said, proffering the faux scythe kit. "The jigsaw pieces, like your majesty, turned out not to be dummies, and now... ah."

He'd picked up another acorn and found another little spade painted on it. "We appear to have found the seeds of another clue."

The Black King crept up behind the Jester, having got bored of being on his own, and tweaked one corner of the tablecloth.

The nearest group of acorns turned up a red heart, of which there was only one, as well as another black spade. Black King immediately nabbed the heart-acorn. He wasn't going to give it up without a fight.

"What'd you find?" the Joker asked eagerly. She didn't want to take it away from him, just know.

"Heart, and an upside-down one," the King said. "You can have the black one if you like, treasured minion."

The Black Queen looked at the Black King with a raised eyebrow. At the same, she reassembled her scythe and promptly ignored the rest of her King's actions.

The Jester looked a bit sheepishly, aware of having broken character, from the King to the Queen and back.

Then she answered, "Thank you, my lord," and accepted the acorn with a bow.

Black King hadn't noticed the lapse. He'd have abandoned his character by now if he didn't like the word "minion" so much. Minion minion minion.

"Can His Majesty see a card with a single red heart on it among the decorations?" the White Knight asked him.

"Why?" asked the Black King, looking at the unique red heart in his hand nonplussed.

"I think it may have something to do with the next clue."

"If you say so, horseman," mumbled the King, staring around at the decorations. "There!" He doomed over, coaxed the giant Ace of Hearts out of one of the displays (there were several hands of playing cards fanned out) and looked at it. "Yep, this one's got a heart on it," he said.

"Well done; and anything else?"

"No," said the Black King.

"On the back, perhaps?"

The King turned it around. "Yeah!" he said.

The back of the card read
SLA
MONS

"Doesn't make any sense," said the King.

"Not on its own, perhaps..." mused the Knight.

"I like the sound of Mons. Are we getting a volcano?" asked the doom beast.

"How many spades have we found altogether?" asked the White Knight.

"That reminds me of a joke," the doom beast remarked.