Hallowe'en 2008 8

The Black Queen patpatted the King's shoulder, all the while looking at the roof as if she were pretending to care. "It's all right. There will be other minions."

She was doing a fantastic job of pretending not to notice his fit of the giggles.

White Knight bowed to the two female personages, retrieved and sheathed his sword. He had already taken a close look at it sometime earlier, and there was no clue hidden there.

The Jester had been watching but now pointedly ignored the Knight. Firstly, he had put her out of a job, and secondly, she had a dislike of post-slaying oneliners.

"...ssSSsssstarrRRrrsssss..." bubbled the body on the floor. There were odd gurglings and growlings coming from it.

"Doom beast?" said the Black King, looking round in surprise.

The scaled, hulking thing was twitching and growing clawed tentacles, thanks to a hidden pullstring cleverly designed to be operated by mouth. "Bassstarrrrrddd!" it growled.

"Monsters these days. Don't they know when to give up the ghost?" asked the White Knight, folding his armoured arms.

Thunder rumbled in the distance. (If the Knight had had any musical leanings, it might have been a dramatic orchestra hit instead.) The monster jumped to his feet. He was a lot more spiky now, although mitigating this effect somewhat by not actually being any less waggy.

"Behold my true form. None have seen it and lived," said the doom beast mark II. "Ooh, they refilled the toasted marshmallows." He followed his nose towards the food.

A piece of paper drifted to the ground behind him.

Rather bored with her messed-up persona, the Joker went for that presumed next clue, crossing under the table and snatching for in out of a roll that brought her back to her feet.

"He's worse at staying in character than I am," Weft mumbled to himself. Half a beat later he joined in with the Knight's applause at the Joker's tumble.

The paper cleared its Z-fold and said:

"The beast is dead; long live the beast!
Your quest moves on a-canter
But hark, what things are stalling here
Attending to your banter?
We blow no horn; we sound no bell;
We're neatly groomed and stable,
All creme except one à Palouse -
Now find him, if you're able."

She thought, more or less, what the hell, bowed to the applause, and declaimed the whole poem. She overdid stresses and such, and, of course, read it out slowly, hoping that would cover up the doubt she had about the pronunciation of some words she didn't recognise.

The rest was enough to reveal the horsiness of the whole affair, though she wasn't sure what "appaloose" meant. Creme a colour, and that another? She hadn't noticed anything like that so far. The way the servants now quite convincingly played herd animals that liked sticking together did not make it all that easy to spot one slighty different in the middle or back, particularly from the angle she had usually.

The Knight smiled at the clue and at its delivery, afterwards turning to scan the mass of horse-headed attendants. Where've you gone, Spot?

At first he had rather conceitedly thought the gathering crowds had come to watch the epic battle. A different purpose was being served at present, namely that it made it a lot harder to pick out the single spotted mask he'd noticed earlier.

"Come by, doom beast," he said experimentally.

"Not now, chief," Basaltine said. He had most of his head in a pumpkin that had been filled with greyish-pink blancmange and coconut shavings.

"I don't think he herd you," said the Black King, coming over to the Knight in between brushing glitter off a midnight death gauntlet. Suitov hadn't warned him the stuff was so clingy.

"I'm sure I never reared him to be so mulish," remarked the White Knight.

"It doesn't behoove him," the Black King agreed. "You should rein him in."

"Perhaps I've been blinkered."

"Take a different tack."

"Manège him a bit more strictly?"

"Clip-clop his wings."

"I think he'd bridle at such treatment. Drink?" asked the Knight, holding out some kind of glass container.

The Black King looked at it for a moment, trying to remember the word for it, then clapped a midnight death gauntlet over his eyes and groaned. Decanter. Right. "Fiend. I hate you," he lied.

The Joker left the charming pair to their chatter, and once again looked for a piece of decoration to climb up for a better view. She ended up a way up a ladder, a plush snake stuck under her arm, on the basis that four eyes saw more than two, and scanned the herd.

She spotted one mask with a black mark on it, and saw to it she didn't lose that one, even if it turned away. Since she couldn't well sit up here and run around on the dancefloor, she called out, "Lady and gentlemen, does any of you have interest in catching a special horse? I might be able to point it out."

The doom beast, who now had 'brains' all over his muzzle as well as stickles all along his back, licked his chops and attended to the Joker's directions.

The spotted horse-mask was standing with a large covered dish. The doom beast considered this for a second before sitting up, cocking his head, holding up his paw and engaging in the most revolting display of puppy-dog eyes and whining one could imagine.

"Oh, well done, sir and madam. You found me," said the servant, who sounded somewhat muzzly behind all the porcelain. He lowered the dish to dog height and took off the lid. It contained a single giant jigsaw piece.

"Is this edible?" asked the doom beast suspiciously.

"Ah, so it was all... horsing around," said the Black Queen, looking rather bored -- although it was her most frequent expression, of course.

"Don't you dare gnaw it," the Joker called out to the doombeast, hurrying towards it. She had slung the rather long plush snake around her waist once, and and the reptile was peeking over her shoulder. The bright green made her costume worse, assuming you liked the generally muted costumes of the other people present.

He shrugged a doggish shrug and left her to it, going instead to paw at the Queen's skirt in a hopeful manner. If he was hoping for a cuddle, he might have been better not having smeared brain-blancmange all over his head and muzzle.

The white-gloved servant lifted the dish to Joker height instead with nary a twitch of his tail.

The jigsaw piece, unchewed, looked as though it showed the missing bit of the patch-pocketed girl with her scythe. There was nothing obviously written on either side of it, apart from the picture.

"Worthy beast. Sit. Stay," the Queen said, barely even regarding the doom beast. Her attention was solely on the Joker and the jigsaw piece. Even so, she was pointing at the ground in front of herself imperiously.

Pretending to be upset by the Joker's behaviour might have led to better results, but as it was, the Joker thanked the servant with a bow and after just a quick look at the piece rushed over to the puzzle to fit it in place.

Just for a moment, the White Knight started and half-raised his left hand.

Half a second later, the reason for his odd reaction made itself known in the form of glowing letters raised across the jigsaw.

They read "P.T.O.".

As soon as a piece was lifted, however, they disappeared and didn't reappear until the piece was replaced.

"Don't panic, but I suspect this may possibly be magic," the Black King muttered in the Joker's ear.

The doom beast, meanwhile, was sitting up annoyingly straight and obediently. "I think we should set it on fire, your maj," he told the Queen.

There was a split-second annoyed quirk before the Joker's face reassembled itself into an inanely delighted grin. "Your intellect is truly astounding, mylord. Would you deign to enlighten this poor little fool as to the meaning of those letters?"

"Are they letters?" asked the Black King, staring at them more closely. "Puh... tuh... oh... P'toe? Potato? Where's my royal reading-minion?"

(The White Knight had become momentarily diverted by lifting and replacing pieces too quickly for the enchantment to keep up.)

"Well, drat," the Joker said darkly. After a short pause, watching the knight, she said, "Well, I don't think we're supposed to spit on it..." It did look like an acronym to her, she just couldn't think of a meaning that made sense here.