Sister Emily's Lightship by Jane Yolen

of anatomy, it is, that head and elbow are so connected.” The infirmarer, being a reformed tippler himself, had plenty more salvos where that one came from. He had given up drink and taken up religion with the same fervor.
    â€œNot my elbow and not my head, you Kilkenny clodpate! This!” The Abbot held out his left hand, where, in the linen, Uncle Finn was just coming to.
    â€œSaints in heaven, but it’s Finn,” cried Elias, making the sign of the cross hastily and missing a fourth of it.
    â€œThat’s not fine at all,” said the Abbot, who had no tolerance for any accents save his own.
    â€œNot fine, Finn,” explained the infirmarer, but since he pronounced them the same, it led to a few more moments of misunderstanding until he reached over and gently removed Uncle Finn from his winding sheet. “You had better be asking his pardon, my lord. He’s a Christian now for sure, which means he will turn the other cheek as often as not. But he’s still quite a hand at elvish curses when he’s riled. Better not to be on his bad side.”
    â€œHe’s already on my bad side,” roared the Abbot, remembering with renewed fury the three bottles of claret. “Fix him up, tidy him up, and shut him up. Then report to me. The minute he can handle a good strong talking-to, I want to know.”
    But Finn was already beginning to sit up, and reaching his wee hands up to his wee head. What was not clear to the two monks was that Finn, while awake, was not aware. The sandal had quite addled him. His magic was turned around and about widdershins. He began to moan and speak in tongues.
    â€œOh, for Our Lord’s sake,” cried the Abbot with great feeling, his own head twanging like a tuning fork by the tone of those tongues.
    The supplication to Our Lord brought Uncle Finn’s eyes wide open, and he began to sing hosannas.
    â€œI wish he’d put a cork in it!” cried the Abbot, his hands to his ears.
    At the word wish, Finn’s eyes got a strange glow in them, and everything not human in the room began to stir about as if caught up in a twisting wind. Faster and faster anything not pinned down began to move: glasses and retorts; bunches of drying patience, pepperwort, and clary; mortars and pestles: long lines of linen bandages; copies of Popular Errors in Physick, Mithradates’ receipt for Venice Treacle, and Drayton’s Hermit. All the while, Uncle Finn kept chanting:
    Pickles and peas, knife and fork,
    Find a bottle, carve a cork,
    Wind it up and in the wine
    A sailor’s life is mighty fine.
    Which, of course, is a terribly mixed-up version of the old bottle spell used mostly by drunken mages to call up spirits.
    Sea winds began to blow, spouts of whales were sighted, dolphin clicks heard, and with one last incredible whoooosh, the whole of the whirling stuff was sucked in through the neck of a nearby bottle of Bordeaux ’79 that Elias used for medicinal purposes only, it being too sour and full of sediment for a tippler of taste. The displaced wine splattered all over the infirmary, and the room smelled like a pothouse for a week.
    Then, with a final thwap, the cork replaced itself. The stirring continued inside the bottle for fully a minute more, and when the wind and mist and moisture had resolved itself, there appeared inside the light green bottle a passable imitation of a sailing ship, with a pestle for a mainmast and linen bandages for sails. Clinging to the mortar steering wheel was Uncle Finn, looking both puzzled and pleased. He gave a weak smile in the direction of the cork, put his hand on his head, and slid down in a faint onto the papier-mache deck on which the ingredients for Venice Treacle could still be discerned.
    â€œOh, my Lord,” said the infirmarer, not really sure if he meant the salutation to have a capital L or a small one.
    But the Abbot, taking it was himself addressed, said softly, “And that should do