*Flashback*
A cruise ship cuts through the wide open sea. Not another boat, or strip of land is visible as flat blue water shines in the mid-day sun. Darker lines form the horizons, empty in every direction. But wait... There is something in the water. An indistinct shape bobs on the ships wake. As the huge ship bears down upon it, it becomes clearer. And then the little boy watching it realises what the shape is, and shouts gleefully: “A pirate! A pirate in the water! They made him walk the plank! Arrr! Arrr!” He picks up his toy cutlass and begins to fight a little over-enthusiastically with another little boy, who gets upset at being stabbed in the stomach, and runs away crying. The crying boy’s mother stands up to give the excited boy’s mother a piece of her mind, but then stops, distracted. For it is a pirate. He’s even dressed like one. And he’s about to go under the ship.
The mother dials the captain on the emergency phone. He gives the order for the ship to be turned. The ship veers to the left and comes to a halt. The pirate bobs on his board, just out of the way of the ships progress. A lifeboat is lowered, and some crew members row over to the figure. He is unconscious, but has a pulse. He is very thin and bedraggled, his striped clothing torn and wet, his skin a fiery red from sunburn. He seems like he has been out here for several days. They lift him into the lifeboat and take him back to the ship, where he is laid on a bed and attended to by the ship doctor. When he recovers consciousness, he tells them he does not remember what happened, and takes a job as a children’s entertainer, pretending to be a pirate.
It really was a pity that Scar had been unconscious during his rescue. It was the most piratical thing he had ever participated in. His father would have been proud of him, floating like that on that tiny piece of wood for days, his clothing all torn. If he’d lasted another day or two, he was sure an albatross or something would have come and pecked out his eye, and he would have had a legitimate reason to wear an eyepatch. He couldn’t help feeling a little hard done by, coming out of such an adventure without an eyepatch. But such was life. Now fate had handed him the opportunity to be a pirate and completely avoid any risk of death, dismemberment, prison, bankruptcy, mutiny, or humiliation at the hands of his own prisoners. This job suits him to his very core.
Unfortunately, some others don’t agree. The children, for instance, don’t believe he is a pirate, even though the captain has given him his own parrot, and he has taught it to say “Arrr!” They laugh at him, and want him to make balloon animals. One little boy keeps challenging him to sword fights, whacking him around the head with a wooden cutlass and calling him a cowardly cur when he refuses.
When the Captain threatens to fire him for failing to make satisfactory balloon animals, Scar feels his last chance at piracy slipping away. He tries harder, practicing making balloon animals at night in his cabin. But all this does is use up the supply of balloons, and litter his cabin with tiny bits of coloured rubber, when they inevitably pop. He is devastated when the Captain calls him into his office to inform him that they will be letting him out at the next port, and gives him his final pay packet.
In keeping with his role as ship pirate, Scar is made to walk the plank as a final send off. They extend the plank from a special hole in the hull, on the very lowest level. Apparently they have done this before. A large crowd gathers to watch. The drop is only about a metre and a half, but somehow that makes it even more embarrassing. As though he is not tough enough to walk the plank at a higher level. They are quite near the docks, within swimming distance, and the townspeople have an excellent view. There are not even any sharks. As Scar walks the plank, he can feel his father rolling in his grave. He is a failure.
To make matters worse, when he reaches the end of the plank, Scar discovers that he is terrified of heights. He slips on the end of the board, and instead of the graceful dive he had planned he splashes into the water in an undignified mass of flailing limbs. As he sinks beneath the surface he spots something through the clear water. It is resting on the sandy sea-floor, in the shade of the docks. It is dark under the docks. The sun doesn’t reach in. Yet there is a sparkle. A glitter. Something is shining. Almost as though it is giving out its own light. Scar rises to the surface, spluttering and coughing. He spits out copious amounts of water, and does not look at his audience. There is a fallen star under the docks, and it is his. He will sell it. He can be rich again! Visions of new boats, open seas and enormous cannons fill his head. Maybe if he gets enough money for the star, he can have his leg amputated and get a pegleg. All the great pirates had peglegs. Finally, finally, he will be respected. He strikes out toward the star.
Sadly, as is often the case with Scar’s plans, he is about 200 years out of date. No-one would buy a star anymore. It had long been discovered that fallen stars had no use whatsoever. They don’t even really sparkle. That stops after a few days, when the star cools down. Then it is just a lump of rock, and who wants one of them? He had severely misconstrued a sign a few years ago, and had been looking for a star ever since. It had been written in huge red letters, screaming from the window of a newspaper publisher, and had been surrounded, for some reason by pictures of young men and women in compromising positions, with their hands over their faces: WE PAY FOR PICTURES OF THE STARS. It follows logically for Scar that they would pay even more for an actual star.
When he reaches the pole of the docks where the star sparkles, he takes a big breath. This is it. He has made it. He dives under the water, eyes wide open even though it is salty. He can’t chance missing it. The water is crystal clear and surprisingly warm, considering it is nearly winter. A school of tiny fish swarm past his nose. One hits his face, but Scar is not distracted. He is filled with the single-minded determination of one who has hit rock bottom and found out it hurts. The star sparkles more brightly as he draws near. It is taking on a shape, but Scar cannot see it. The water is deeper than he had expected. He is running out of air, and everything is going black and wiggly. His lungs are about to burst, and so are his eardrums, because he has forgotten to breathe out through his nose, and the pressure is higher near the sea floor. He reaches out. His hand closes around the star. It is surprisingly smooth, hard, and hollow, with a large hole in the top. But he does not have time to think about it now. He kicks hard for the surface.
His head breaks the surface, and he gasps for air. He has never had anything so sweet pass his lips. And he had eaten pure sugar as a child. He floats on his back for a moment, just breathing, clasping the star with all his might. He is not going to dive back down there. He looks over at the shore. The crowd has dissipated. Clearly, nobody wants to be held responsible for the preventable drowning of a children’s entertainer. Scar smirks. There will be no-one to fight him for the star. The fools. And then he looks at what he holds in his hand.
Scar had not realised that stars looked like this. It is much longer than it is wide. It is hollow, with a large hole in the top, at one end. Underneath the hole, a long narrow bit with a flat end pokes downwards. The end is level with the flat bottom of the other end of the star. The whole thing is not much bigger than a small woman’s foot. In fact, it looks a lot like a woman’s shoe. A very nice woman’s shoe, it is true, but a shoe all the same. For a moment Scar is extremely disappointed. He can feel his whole future flooding away from him. His happy visions of piles of jewels, of gold and silver coins heaped in a treasure room, of antique guns with diamond bullets, are fading rapidly. He almost throws it away, but something stops him. It has started to glow.
* * *
The Gods
Julius Rufus Pegasus, father of Sameus Rufus Pegasus, God Omnipotent over all lands west of the great ocean was sitting on his sofa. A pretty servant girl was feeding him grapes. He grinned. This was the life. Omnipotence. Immortality. A pretty servant girl feeding you grapes. Useless sons being stabbed in the back and composing terrible poetry was nothing in the great scheme of things. The plan to bring his son into the family business, so to speak, was well underway...
“Julie!” A young God, omnipotent only in a small region in the very far south (and thus not omnipotent at all), burst through the door. The servant girl jumped as she fed her master a grape, and accidently punched him in the mouth. He frowned and waved her away.
“This had better be good news,” he bellowed at the young God. In fact, he did not care very much if the news was bad. All could be fixed with a wave of the hand, by one such as himself. He just did not like being interrupted. Particularly by some young upstart who felt it was acceptable to call his superiors ‘Julie’. Julius Rufus Pegasus really hated being called Julie.
The young God quivered. There was good news, but there was also bad. Which should he tell first?
“Out with it!” bellowed Julius Rufus Pegasus.
“The pirate has found the shoe,” the young God announced, a jolly and insincere grin cracking his face.
“What’s the bad news?” Julius Rufus Pegasus sighed.
“Your son has completely disregarded your instruction and is on a pointless quest to rescue the girl he has been composing those terrible poems for.”
Julius Rufus Pegasus groaned. He had known this, of course, deep in the recesses of his mind. He was omniscient, after all. He had just been choosing to ignore the knowledge. Apparently it was time to take a greater interest in his son’s quest.
* * *
The shoe sparkles like nothing Scar has ever seen. It glitters, and shines with an inner light that has no source. Rainbows seem to be stretching out from it. And Scar sees that this is worth so much more than a stupid star. It is obviously magical. It probably has a genie in it. Or a direct connection to the Gods. For once, Scar is right about something, although the Gods will never let him know that. He swims to shore.
That night, Scar sits in the tiny room he has rented at the most disreputable inn in town, and rubs desperately at the shoe, waiting for the genie to pop out. He sleeps with his door and windows locked, fingers tight around the shoe.
That night he has a dream. A genie comes. It is wispy and bad tempered, but shows him the way to a city with golden walls and a diamond road. In the city, thousands of supremely rich men fight to buy the shoe.
When he wakes, he tucks the shoe out of sight in his bag, buys provisions with his pay from the ship, and sets out to sell his shoe.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Chapter 29 - Travels of Hermits
What has happened to the hermits since we last encountered them? Have they been slain by enormous angry things? Have they tamed the EATs? Have they accepted Joseph as their leader? Or have they all mysteriously died of fish poisoning shortly after his arrival?
The answer is that none of these things happened. As you may recall, Joseph’s defeat of the Enormous Angry Thing brought great glory upon him, and he was elevated to the illustrious position of community leader. He was given the best of brides, and there were great hopes for him to provide children who were as brave, heroic, averagely intelligent as he so obviously was. However, after a few weeks, the hermits began to catch glimpses of Joseph’s true, cowardly, nature. He refused to hunt another Enormous Angry Thing. He would not fish from the rock in the fastest flow of the river, the rock specially designated as the fishing spot of leaders, for fear of being washed away. The hermits were denied the best fish in the river, because they hid under the leader’s rock. They began to become disillusioned with their new leader. As winter came upon them, they grew cold, and there were rumblings of revolt.
But Joseph was a navigator, and his true talent lay in steering people in the direction he thought they should go. He saw the true reason his people were unhappy. It was not that he had refused to fight another Enormous Angry Thing. It was not that he would not swim the rapids of an ice-cold river in which lurked untold monsters, in order to bring fish to them. It was not that he had not supplied any children in the few months since his arrival. The people’s anger stemmed from the need to worry about these things. They had been exiled a great many years ago, for minor wrongs that had mostly been forgotten. And now this small group led a lonely, inbred existence in the isolated caves of the Eastern reaches, punished for the sins of their grandparents. Now they knew no other life. They were cold in winter, and lost family to exposure every year. The Enormous Angry Things were becoming more and more daring, and soon would force them out of the relative comfort of their caves. And above all, they were sick of all the fish. Fish, every day, nothing but fish. And though they were friendly to the few strangers who arrived, welcoming them into the fold and sharing their fish, honouring those who defeated the beasts, and helping them on their way, the hermits were always disturbed by strangers. Strangers reminded them of what they were missing.
And so Joseph thought and thought. He watched his people shiver. He saw the Enormous Angry Things become even more enormous as they put on weight and grew thicker fur for winter. He asked subtle and tricky questions of his wife and few friends, gleaning from them all the information he could about the origin of the community.
The society from which their ancestors had been banished was the very city towards which Barney, Sammy, and Celia had been travelling when they had left the hermits. Barking mad people were obviously not conducive to the manufacture of quality shoes.
Joseph came up with a plan. He spent weeks on it, making sure it was watertight, and writing his speech. A good speech takes time. A leader does not just stand before his people and make it up as he goes along. He works on his speech for ages and ages, until the floor of his cave is littered with screwed up paper (or in Joseph’s case, leaves and animal hides, because paper was very rare in that part of the world). Then he practices in front of the mirror, over and over, until he can recite the whole thing without a mistake, even adding expression and hand movements, and in places of extreme importance, shouting. Only then can he appear omnipotent before his audience.
Then, after weeks of practicing, perfecting his movements by staring at his distorted reflection in the ice at the edge of the river, Joseph called a meeting of the community and incited rebellion.
“People!” He shouted, “There is a world out there! A world where winter does not mean shivering in caves amongst the skins of the few animals caught over the year! A world where winter does not equate with starvation because the fish are trapped beneath the ice! A world where people need not live in fear of being gored to death and eaten by Enormous Angry Things, in the night! This is a world in which you believe you are not welcome, but this is not true. It is not you that is exiled, it was your ancestors. There is no reason for your suffering! Come with me, and we will journey to the land of your fathers, where there is warmth and freedom of choice at mealtimes. We will cross the seven rivers! We will pass through the mountains! We will skirt the edge of the desert, so we don’t die of thirst! Who’s with me? Who is claiming their rightful place in the world?”
A fearsome howling filled the air, as the hermits, in their excitement, reverted back to their ancestral type and were overcome by the urge to bay like dogs.
Joseph began to have doubts about the wisdom of his undertaking.
However, these doubts were soon alleviated. Throughout their final winter in the caves of the Eastern Reaches, the hermits occupied themselves with preparation for their journey. Sammy, Barney, and Celia may have gone with only small bags of belongings and some leftovers, but that was not how the hermits rolled.
They rationed themselves, and dried what fish they had left. A large band of the more physically able young men gathered together and felled an Enormous Angry Thing while it was sleeping. They dried the meat for provisions, and made new clothes from the skin and fur. When spring first came, they were ready.
And so they set out. The journey was long, and hard, but they were well prepared. Maps drawn long ago by the first ancestors to be exiled had lain unused in the deep recesses of the caves for years, except in particularly harsh winters, when the oldest and driest would be used to get the fires started. They followed an easier path than they had chosen for their visitors, moving downstream to cross the river at its widest but shallowest point. After many long days of trekking through barren lands and climbing sheer rockfaces with full packs, the view began to change. Where craggy golden hills had formed the horizon, they were replaced by a flat line of green fuzz that stretched out as far as the eye could see, in both directions. They were nearing the forest.
The plan was simple. They would approach the city by the back gate, where unwanted citizens were ushered out of the city, thus avoiding both the confusion of the two golden roads, and the strict security system at the main gate. They would make camp in the forest near the gate, biding their time and slowly infiltrating the city. The women had been practicing making slippers out of the hide of the Enormous Angry Thing for weeks. Once a comfortable position had been established, they would stage an uprising from inside the city, enlisting the help of those on the fringes of society, under threat of expulsion from the city. It could not fail.
As they drew closer to their goal, the land flattened. Straggly weeds began to grow, and intermittent shrubs. These were replaced by taller trees, thin and sickly, which in turn gave out to bigger trees. It grew dark in the forest, as thick leaves began to block out the sky, solid boughs forming a roof above the travellers. The path became indistinct in the prolific undergrowth, and landmarks became few and far between. One moss covered tree trunk looks very much like another, in the dark.
But Joseph was a navigator by profession, and would never admit he didn’t know the way. He tramped confidently on, deep into the forest, ignoring the misgivings forming in the back of his mind, cast by the smothering silence and the odd blue glow the brambles seemed to be giving off. His trusting tribe cheerfully followed their leader into the depths of hell.
For the last day or so, occasionally, out of the corner of his eye, Joseph had seen things. A bramble had seemed to visibly grow. A bough had seemed to move position. Joseph put these things down to the wind, even though he knew that there was no wind that could pass through the thick forest. But now, the trees seemed to watch him. The knots and craggy bark of their trunks formed faces, with eyes that followed him as he marched into doom. He gave the order to stop their trek for the night, claiming to believe that they could not find a better campsite, although they were not in a clearing, and the ground was choked with vines, and bushes whose thorns leaked a disturbing blue liquid. In reality, he stopped because he was a coward and he knew it. It was in his nature to hide from what he feared, and the only way he could think of to do that was to wrap himself in blankets, close his eyes, and wish very hard that he was at home with his mother.
As they placed down their packs, Joseph slowly became aware of two things. The first was that the forest was no longer silent. Vines hissed as they snaked towards the intruders. Branches cracked and snapped as they moved. The trees seemed to murmur, and then to growl. Joseph began to question the wisdom of his choice of campsite. The second was that somewhere along the way, one of their number had been silently and surreptitiously claimed by the forest.
Joseph closed his eyes. He pictured his bedroom clearly and in great detail. He pictured his mother, smiling at him, and handing him a plate of food. He willed himself back into his bedroom, concentrating on it like he had never concentrated before. He opened his eyes. Nothing had changed, except the forest had closed in even more. It was completely black now, except for the strange blue light given out by the thorns. Vines were strung between the trees, separating him from all his companions except Arnold, who stood next to him. There was the scrape of flint, and a spark lit up a few metres to their left. The spark lit a prepared torch, bringing some welcome light to the forest. The torch lit up the man’s face, showing joy at the light turn suddenly to surprise and horror, as a thorn bush leapt from the ground and buried its sharpest spines into his scalp.
It was his screams that did it. Joseph had seen his face before he dropped the torch. The man attacked had been called Jack, and had come to be almost a friend over the past few months. And so, although his hands were shaking, and his lungs did not seem to be working properly, Joseph decided that the time had come to take action. His mother had always told him of the importance of being assertive. Now was the time to make her, and his people, proud. Now was his time to be a hero. Although, said a little voice in the back of his head, my mother won’t actually find out if I die a hero. I could just run for my life.
He did not run, though. He began to think. First of all, he told everyone to be quiet. It seemed that if you did not draw attention to yourself, the forest did not know you were there. Then, as the forest quietened, he honed his navigational skills. He had never been a very good navigator, but as we all find, in stressful times, hidden knowledge begins to surface. Unfortunately, most of it was useless. The square root of sixty-four is eight. Eighty percent of a iceberg’s volume is underwater. There are twenty-eight species of clownfish, which make their homes among the sea anemones, eating scraps of fish. Joseph stifled a groan. Interesting, but irrelevant. He needed something that would help him navigate the endless maze of twisted trees and sneaky vines. Navigation was hard enough on the sea, under clear skies, with the stars as guides. Here, the stars could not be seen. There was no river to follow. The climate was uniform inside the forest – north could not be found by judging the amount of moss on each side of the trees. Not that he had any desire to touch the trees if it could possibly be avoided. He imagined it would result in a lot of pain. And to top it all off, the trees in this forest moved! There was no question of following the path they had made, or using landmarks, because they were all in different places, and would probably lead them straight into the heart of the forest, where the Gods only knew what waited for them. And suddenly, a thought came to him. They had seemed to be walking in a straight line. People walk in a circle when lost because one leg is the tiniest fraction shorter than the other. If he could work out which of his legs was shorter, and by how much, he could adjust their path for the amount they had turned, and lead his people back out of the forest, compensating for his shorter leg by turning in the opposite direction every now and then. He whispered his idea to Arnold, who began to measure Joseph’s legs with a strip of cloth. They were going to escape.
The answer is that none of these things happened. As you may recall, Joseph’s defeat of the Enormous Angry Thing brought great glory upon him, and he was elevated to the illustrious position of community leader. He was given the best of brides, and there were great hopes for him to provide children who were as brave, heroic, averagely intelligent as he so obviously was. However, after a few weeks, the hermits began to catch glimpses of Joseph’s true, cowardly, nature. He refused to hunt another Enormous Angry Thing. He would not fish from the rock in the fastest flow of the river, the rock specially designated as the fishing spot of leaders, for fear of being washed away. The hermits were denied the best fish in the river, because they hid under the leader’s rock. They began to become disillusioned with their new leader. As winter came upon them, they grew cold, and there were rumblings of revolt.
But Joseph was a navigator, and his true talent lay in steering people in the direction he thought they should go. He saw the true reason his people were unhappy. It was not that he had refused to fight another Enormous Angry Thing. It was not that he would not swim the rapids of an ice-cold river in which lurked untold monsters, in order to bring fish to them. It was not that he had not supplied any children in the few months since his arrival. The people’s anger stemmed from the need to worry about these things. They had been exiled a great many years ago, for minor wrongs that had mostly been forgotten. And now this small group led a lonely, inbred existence in the isolated caves of the Eastern reaches, punished for the sins of their grandparents. Now they knew no other life. They were cold in winter, and lost family to exposure every year. The Enormous Angry Things were becoming more and more daring, and soon would force them out of the relative comfort of their caves. And above all, they were sick of all the fish. Fish, every day, nothing but fish. And though they were friendly to the few strangers who arrived, welcoming them into the fold and sharing their fish, honouring those who defeated the beasts, and helping them on their way, the hermits were always disturbed by strangers. Strangers reminded them of what they were missing.
And so Joseph thought and thought. He watched his people shiver. He saw the Enormous Angry Things become even more enormous as they put on weight and grew thicker fur for winter. He asked subtle and tricky questions of his wife and few friends, gleaning from them all the information he could about the origin of the community.
The society from which their ancestors had been banished was the very city towards which Barney, Sammy, and Celia had been travelling when they had left the hermits. Barking mad people were obviously not conducive to the manufacture of quality shoes.
Joseph came up with a plan. He spent weeks on it, making sure it was watertight, and writing his speech. A good speech takes time. A leader does not just stand before his people and make it up as he goes along. He works on his speech for ages and ages, until the floor of his cave is littered with screwed up paper (or in Joseph’s case, leaves and animal hides, because paper was very rare in that part of the world). Then he practices in front of the mirror, over and over, until he can recite the whole thing without a mistake, even adding expression and hand movements, and in places of extreme importance, shouting. Only then can he appear omnipotent before his audience.
Then, after weeks of practicing, perfecting his movements by staring at his distorted reflection in the ice at the edge of the river, Joseph called a meeting of the community and incited rebellion.
“People!” He shouted, “There is a world out there! A world where winter does not mean shivering in caves amongst the skins of the few animals caught over the year! A world where winter does not equate with starvation because the fish are trapped beneath the ice! A world where people need not live in fear of being gored to death and eaten by Enormous Angry Things, in the night! This is a world in which you believe you are not welcome, but this is not true. It is not you that is exiled, it was your ancestors. There is no reason for your suffering! Come with me, and we will journey to the land of your fathers, where there is warmth and freedom of choice at mealtimes. We will cross the seven rivers! We will pass through the mountains! We will skirt the edge of the desert, so we don’t die of thirst! Who’s with me? Who is claiming their rightful place in the world?”
A fearsome howling filled the air, as the hermits, in their excitement, reverted back to their ancestral type and were overcome by the urge to bay like dogs.
Joseph began to have doubts about the wisdom of his undertaking.
However, these doubts were soon alleviated. Throughout their final winter in the caves of the Eastern Reaches, the hermits occupied themselves with preparation for their journey. Sammy, Barney, and Celia may have gone with only small bags of belongings and some leftovers, but that was not how the hermits rolled.
They rationed themselves, and dried what fish they had left. A large band of the more physically able young men gathered together and felled an Enormous Angry Thing while it was sleeping. They dried the meat for provisions, and made new clothes from the skin and fur. When spring first came, they were ready.
And so they set out. The journey was long, and hard, but they were well prepared. Maps drawn long ago by the first ancestors to be exiled had lain unused in the deep recesses of the caves for years, except in particularly harsh winters, when the oldest and driest would be used to get the fires started. They followed an easier path than they had chosen for their visitors, moving downstream to cross the river at its widest but shallowest point. After many long days of trekking through barren lands and climbing sheer rockfaces with full packs, the view began to change. Where craggy golden hills had formed the horizon, they were replaced by a flat line of green fuzz that stretched out as far as the eye could see, in both directions. They were nearing the forest.
The plan was simple. They would approach the city by the back gate, where unwanted citizens were ushered out of the city, thus avoiding both the confusion of the two golden roads, and the strict security system at the main gate. They would make camp in the forest near the gate, biding their time and slowly infiltrating the city. The women had been practicing making slippers out of the hide of the Enormous Angry Thing for weeks. Once a comfortable position had been established, they would stage an uprising from inside the city, enlisting the help of those on the fringes of society, under threat of expulsion from the city. It could not fail.
As they drew closer to their goal, the land flattened. Straggly weeds began to grow, and intermittent shrubs. These were replaced by taller trees, thin and sickly, which in turn gave out to bigger trees. It grew dark in the forest, as thick leaves began to block out the sky, solid boughs forming a roof above the travellers. The path became indistinct in the prolific undergrowth, and landmarks became few and far between. One moss covered tree trunk looks very much like another, in the dark.
But Joseph was a navigator by profession, and would never admit he didn’t know the way. He tramped confidently on, deep into the forest, ignoring the misgivings forming in the back of his mind, cast by the smothering silence and the odd blue glow the brambles seemed to be giving off. His trusting tribe cheerfully followed their leader into the depths of hell.
For the last day or so, occasionally, out of the corner of his eye, Joseph had seen things. A bramble had seemed to visibly grow. A bough had seemed to move position. Joseph put these things down to the wind, even though he knew that there was no wind that could pass through the thick forest. But now, the trees seemed to watch him. The knots and craggy bark of their trunks formed faces, with eyes that followed him as he marched into doom. He gave the order to stop their trek for the night, claiming to believe that they could not find a better campsite, although they were not in a clearing, and the ground was choked with vines, and bushes whose thorns leaked a disturbing blue liquid. In reality, he stopped because he was a coward and he knew it. It was in his nature to hide from what he feared, and the only way he could think of to do that was to wrap himself in blankets, close his eyes, and wish very hard that he was at home with his mother.
As they placed down their packs, Joseph slowly became aware of two things. The first was that the forest was no longer silent. Vines hissed as they snaked towards the intruders. Branches cracked and snapped as they moved. The trees seemed to murmur, and then to growl. Joseph began to question the wisdom of his choice of campsite. The second was that somewhere along the way, one of their number had been silently and surreptitiously claimed by the forest.
Joseph closed his eyes. He pictured his bedroom clearly and in great detail. He pictured his mother, smiling at him, and handing him a plate of food. He willed himself back into his bedroom, concentrating on it like he had never concentrated before. He opened his eyes. Nothing had changed, except the forest had closed in even more. It was completely black now, except for the strange blue light given out by the thorns. Vines were strung between the trees, separating him from all his companions except Arnold, who stood next to him. There was the scrape of flint, and a spark lit up a few metres to their left. The spark lit a prepared torch, bringing some welcome light to the forest. The torch lit up the man’s face, showing joy at the light turn suddenly to surprise and horror, as a thorn bush leapt from the ground and buried its sharpest spines into his scalp.
It was his screams that did it. Joseph had seen his face before he dropped the torch. The man attacked had been called Jack, and had come to be almost a friend over the past few months. And so, although his hands were shaking, and his lungs did not seem to be working properly, Joseph decided that the time had come to take action. His mother had always told him of the importance of being assertive. Now was the time to make her, and his people, proud. Now was his time to be a hero. Although, said a little voice in the back of his head, my mother won’t actually find out if I die a hero. I could just run for my life.
He did not run, though. He began to think. First of all, he told everyone to be quiet. It seemed that if you did not draw attention to yourself, the forest did not know you were there. Then, as the forest quietened, he honed his navigational skills. He had never been a very good navigator, but as we all find, in stressful times, hidden knowledge begins to surface. Unfortunately, most of it was useless. The square root of sixty-four is eight. Eighty percent of a iceberg’s volume is underwater. There are twenty-eight species of clownfish, which make their homes among the sea anemones, eating scraps of fish. Joseph stifled a groan. Interesting, but irrelevant. He needed something that would help him navigate the endless maze of twisted trees and sneaky vines. Navigation was hard enough on the sea, under clear skies, with the stars as guides. Here, the stars could not be seen. There was no river to follow. The climate was uniform inside the forest – north could not be found by judging the amount of moss on each side of the trees. Not that he had any desire to touch the trees if it could possibly be avoided. He imagined it would result in a lot of pain. And to top it all off, the trees in this forest moved! There was no question of following the path they had made, or using landmarks, because they were all in different places, and would probably lead them straight into the heart of the forest, where the Gods only knew what waited for them. And suddenly, a thought came to him. They had seemed to be walking in a straight line. People walk in a circle when lost because one leg is the tiniest fraction shorter than the other. If he could work out which of his legs was shorter, and by how much, he could adjust their path for the amount they had turned, and lead his people back out of the forest, compensating for his shorter leg by turning in the opposite direction every now and then. He whispered his idea to Arnold, who began to measure Joseph’s legs with a strip of cloth. They were going to escape.
Chapter 28 - Queen of the Elves
Where did the elves take Celia? More importantly, why did the elves takes Celia? All became clear shortly after she was so rudely carried off.
The elves weaved effortlessly through the thick forest. The trees seemed to politely step aside to let them past. They ran fast; the trees blurred before Celia’s eyes. The elf that carried her seemed not to notice her weight as she hung like a sack over his shoulder. She could see the forest though his body. It was highly disturbing. But he ran smoothly, and she was barely jarred at all.
After an hour or so of running, the elves began to slow. The forest was beginning to look familiar, even upside down and through the translucent body of a moving elf. This part of the forest could never be forgotten. There was the tree from which Barney had hung helplessly, and had to be rescued. There was the thorn bush that Sammy had hacked to pieces with his sword.
If you have ever been carried off by elves, you will know that it is not a particularly pleasant experience. Elves are fascinating and noble creatures. They are also utterly convinced of their own superiority, and treat all other species with either a condescending tolerance or a scornful abhorrence. Usually if you are unfortunate enough to be carried off, you fall into the latter category, and only extreme good luck can save you. Contrary to popular belief, elves do not spend their time singing and dancing in joyful harmony – singing is something they only inflict on prisoners as a form of torture. One note at sufficient volume can rupture an eardrum.
Humans had always fallen into the first category, never being considered enough of a threat to be taken seriously. However, this was changing. People were destroying the forest, moving further in by the day. They were encroaching on the elves’ territory in the depths of the forest, and awakening the souls of the trees, which had long lain dormant. And the trees were angry, disturbing the pleasant lives of the elves and making them furious. And so the elves had come up with a plan.
Celia fell into neither category. Unbeknownst to her, her mother, who had died giving birth to her, had been an elf. An exiled elf to be sure, banished from the forest for loving a human, but an elf all the same. And not just any elf. She had been the last remaining descendent of Femmur, Elf-King of the East. He had been magnificent, leading the 501 year rebellion of ancient times, which had gained them the peace of the forests. When the elves had discovered the identity of the beautiful young female they had banished, they spent years searching for her, but it was too late. Now they had found her daughter.
As they reached the path Sammy had created with his Godly power, when he was looking for her, Celia realised what was happening. Those elves didn’t give up easily. When the trees had taken her, she had been carried by the vines above the brambles. They had dropped her suddenly, and everything had gone black: she had either fainted or been knocked out. And when she had awoken, she was dressed in a silver-green shimmering shift and a crown of leaves, and was being propelled toward a tree that had grown into the shape of a throne. She had not even thought of elves. They had been very quiet and were almost invisible, after all. She realised now that they must have been there, waiting to officially crown her, when Sammy had come to rescue her. She shuddered to think how close she had come to being their queen – if Sammy had been less God-like in his rescue attempt, if he had been a few minutes later....
They reached the coronation clearing. It was dark, but for green-tinged light that split the air in rays. Dark green mosses draped over branches and coated gnarled trunks. Leaf litter lay knee deep over the forest floor, blue-spiked brambles trailing over it. And everywhere, everywhere were the vines. The looped and twisted, snaked around trunks, criss-crossed, net-like, in the canopy. Celia could feel their tension. They were ready to spring into action at any sign of trouble.
And so they did.
Celia was not one to go down easily in a fight. She may have been supremely sensible, but even the most sensible of us sometimes take on more than we can handle, if the sensible decision in unpalatable. So instead of making the sensible decision, bowing to the demands of the elves, becoming their queen, and then slowly destroying them from the inside as revenge for kidnapping her and possibly killing her friends, she fought. She didn’t really have a plan. Or any weaponry. She had no magical power. She was not a god. She was alone. But sometimes a little determination can be all you need.
She took the only course of action available. She waited until the elf holding her had placed her on the ground, then grabbed him by the ankle, and bit it. Hard. Until then, the elves had been completely silent. With that single bite, she made two discoveries. Firstly, and most importantly, elves have a very low pain threshold (seriously, how much can it hurt to be bitten on the ankle by an average sized teenage girl). Secondly, there is a reason elves don’t talk. The noise it made could have shattered bone.
All the other elves stopped in their coronation preparation and turned to look. The chief of the clan, who was polishing the crown of silver leaves jumped, and dropped it. It fell into the leaf litter, and had to be polished all over again. The two female elves who were preparing the throne, draping soft blankets of moss over the twisted branches jumped and tore the sheet, and another covering had to be found. The elf-guard, who surrounded Celia, trained their arrows into the nearby forest, believing that any noise that horrible had to be a warning of intruders. The bitten elf did not correct them, being too embarrassed at shrieking because their queen had bitten him.
And so Celia had time to make her escape. There was great confusion and consternation over the assumed intruders, because it had always been believed that nothing and nobody could pass the sentries undetected, and certainly not pass by the entire guard to invisibly attack the primary treasure guard. They must be using magic, the elves thought. Somebody has put a hex on our head huntsman and guard. They disliked magic; they felt it was cheating and unsportsmanlike. This made them angry, and they began to hunt the filthy cheaters who dared enter their territory. There was much more shrieking.
In all the noise and confusion, Celia slipped out of reach of the embarrassed head huntsman, who was now rolling on the ground, groaning in imagined pain, because he had convinced himself that some evil magic was being worked upon him. She slithered through the leaf litter until she was entirely coated in filth, and well camouflaged against the forest floor. Slowly, carefully, she crept beneath the brambles, holding her breath so she wasn’t accidently caught on a thorn.
When she reached the edge of the clearing, she looked back. Fifty elves were running about confusedly, shouting angrily at the magicians who were making themselves magically invisible in the surrounding forest. One elf was calmly polishing the crown. The two females were frantically weaving another moss sheet. Three more were being magically tortured. She slipped out beneath the vines.
Here she ran into trouble. The brambles were thicker outside the clearing. She could see the iridescent blue poison dripping from the thorns. She had no idea where she was. The path Sammy had forged on his rescue mission had either disappeared, or entered the other side of the clearing, because it was nowhere in sight. She pushed on regardless, because at that moment she thought dying painfully, and alone, strangled by poison brambles in an evil forest across the sea from home, was preferable to spending another moment in the company of creatures that made noises like that.
There was no path through, so she made one, pulling the brambles aside, grabbing them in the bare spaces between the thorns and yanking. This worked well for about half a metre. Then she miscalculated the distance between two thorns, and a drop of poison touched her hand. She stumbled, shaking it off, and fell full length into the thorn bush.
It hurt. Everywhere. There was sharp, biting pain, where the thorns cut her, and she could feel warm blood trickling down her legs. There was dull, thumping pain, where she had hit the ground, and bruises where forming. But above all, there was searing, burning pain of the poison, where it ran over her skin and seeped into her wounds. She screamed and screamed, tears washing her face.
The elves began to sing. It was a horrendous noise, designed to distract a magician to the point where he cannot use his magic because he is curled up in the foetal position with his hands over his ears. “We will come for you... we will come for you... with trees and vines and poisoned arrows... knives and spears and clubs... we will come for you...”
The forest sprang to attention and began to move. The brambles that had caught Celia twisted up to form a cage. Trees formed a circle around it, vines twisting around. She was well and truly trapped, but did not notice because she was too busy screaming in pain.
Why did I run? She wondered. I could have been a queen. I could have worn a crown and bossed the elves around. I could have controlled the forest. And then the pain overcame her, and she fainted.
Unsurprisingly, the elves did not find the magician. When they found Celia in the cage, they were very angry. They took her roughly back to the coronation clearing. They gave her the antidote, forced her into a silver green dress, and sat her on the throne. The coronation was beginning.
Celia was still a bit groggy. She remembered it had taken Sammy days to recover from the poison, and he still wasn’t back to normal. Obviously the elf antidote was more effective than the one Sammy had been given. She did not feel any pain from the moment the antidote was given. She was, however, slightly dizzy. It felt like the world was going in fast forward around her, and she could not move to get out of the way. So she sat on the throne and watched as the elves formed two almost invisible lines on either side of a long carpet of most. She watched as the leader advanced slowly up the aisle, circle of silver leaves in outstretched hands. She sat still and silent, as the crown was placed upon her head, and bound there. And as she felt the crown of leaves bind itself to her, weaving through her hair, she felt something else. Power.
Celia had never had power. Her father had ruled the farm with an iron fist, and had never listened to her. Even on this journey she had felt powerless. The boys were willing to follow her lead when she had a sensible plan, but they all knew she wasn’t really in charge. Nobody in the world could stop Sammy when he decided to do something, and Barney, in his own way, was just as stubborn. Now, before her, lay a sea of faces who watched her expectantly, waiting for her command as coerced queen of the elves. They didn’t seem particularly bright either, which she took as a plus. They would do anything she told them, as long as she didn’t try to escape, suggest cutting down the forest, or use any magic. She didn’t think she would have any trouble following those self-imposed guidelines, because experience had taught her that escape was impossible, the trees, when angered, were terrifying, and that she was entirely lacking in any form of magical ability. But she knew what she wanted to do as queen.
And so, Celia, Queen of Elves, began to plan.
The elves weaved effortlessly through the thick forest. The trees seemed to politely step aside to let them past. They ran fast; the trees blurred before Celia’s eyes. The elf that carried her seemed not to notice her weight as she hung like a sack over his shoulder. She could see the forest though his body. It was highly disturbing. But he ran smoothly, and she was barely jarred at all.
After an hour or so of running, the elves began to slow. The forest was beginning to look familiar, even upside down and through the translucent body of a moving elf. This part of the forest could never be forgotten. There was the tree from which Barney had hung helplessly, and had to be rescued. There was the thorn bush that Sammy had hacked to pieces with his sword.
If you have ever been carried off by elves, you will know that it is not a particularly pleasant experience. Elves are fascinating and noble creatures. They are also utterly convinced of their own superiority, and treat all other species with either a condescending tolerance or a scornful abhorrence. Usually if you are unfortunate enough to be carried off, you fall into the latter category, and only extreme good luck can save you. Contrary to popular belief, elves do not spend their time singing and dancing in joyful harmony – singing is something they only inflict on prisoners as a form of torture. One note at sufficient volume can rupture an eardrum.
Humans had always fallen into the first category, never being considered enough of a threat to be taken seriously. However, this was changing. People were destroying the forest, moving further in by the day. They were encroaching on the elves’ territory in the depths of the forest, and awakening the souls of the trees, which had long lain dormant. And the trees were angry, disturbing the pleasant lives of the elves and making them furious. And so the elves had come up with a plan.
Celia fell into neither category. Unbeknownst to her, her mother, who had died giving birth to her, had been an elf. An exiled elf to be sure, banished from the forest for loving a human, but an elf all the same. And not just any elf. She had been the last remaining descendent of Femmur, Elf-King of the East. He had been magnificent, leading the 501 year rebellion of ancient times, which had gained them the peace of the forests. When the elves had discovered the identity of the beautiful young female they had banished, they spent years searching for her, but it was too late. Now they had found her daughter.
As they reached the path Sammy had created with his Godly power, when he was looking for her, Celia realised what was happening. Those elves didn’t give up easily. When the trees had taken her, she had been carried by the vines above the brambles. They had dropped her suddenly, and everything had gone black: she had either fainted or been knocked out. And when she had awoken, she was dressed in a silver-green shimmering shift and a crown of leaves, and was being propelled toward a tree that had grown into the shape of a throne. She had not even thought of elves. They had been very quiet and were almost invisible, after all. She realised now that they must have been there, waiting to officially crown her, when Sammy had come to rescue her. She shuddered to think how close she had come to being their queen – if Sammy had been less God-like in his rescue attempt, if he had been a few minutes later....
They reached the coronation clearing. It was dark, but for green-tinged light that split the air in rays. Dark green mosses draped over branches and coated gnarled trunks. Leaf litter lay knee deep over the forest floor, blue-spiked brambles trailing over it. And everywhere, everywhere were the vines. The looped and twisted, snaked around trunks, criss-crossed, net-like, in the canopy. Celia could feel their tension. They were ready to spring into action at any sign of trouble.
And so they did.
Celia was not one to go down easily in a fight. She may have been supremely sensible, but even the most sensible of us sometimes take on more than we can handle, if the sensible decision in unpalatable. So instead of making the sensible decision, bowing to the demands of the elves, becoming their queen, and then slowly destroying them from the inside as revenge for kidnapping her and possibly killing her friends, she fought. She didn’t really have a plan. Or any weaponry. She had no magical power. She was not a god. She was alone. But sometimes a little determination can be all you need.
She took the only course of action available. She waited until the elf holding her had placed her on the ground, then grabbed him by the ankle, and bit it. Hard. Until then, the elves had been completely silent. With that single bite, she made two discoveries. Firstly, and most importantly, elves have a very low pain threshold (seriously, how much can it hurt to be bitten on the ankle by an average sized teenage girl). Secondly, there is a reason elves don’t talk. The noise it made could have shattered bone.
All the other elves stopped in their coronation preparation and turned to look. The chief of the clan, who was polishing the crown of silver leaves jumped, and dropped it. It fell into the leaf litter, and had to be polished all over again. The two female elves who were preparing the throne, draping soft blankets of moss over the twisted branches jumped and tore the sheet, and another covering had to be found. The elf-guard, who surrounded Celia, trained their arrows into the nearby forest, believing that any noise that horrible had to be a warning of intruders. The bitten elf did not correct them, being too embarrassed at shrieking because their queen had bitten him.
And so Celia had time to make her escape. There was great confusion and consternation over the assumed intruders, because it had always been believed that nothing and nobody could pass the sentries undetected, and certainly not pass by the entire guard to invisibly attack the primary treasure guard. They must be using magic, the elves thought. Somebody has put a hex on our head huntsman and guard. They disliked magic; they felt it was cheating and unsportsmanlike. This made them angry, and they began to hunt the filthy cheaters who dared enter their territory. There was much more shrieking.
In all the noise and confusion, Celia slipped out of reach of the embarrassed head huntsman, who was now rolling on the ground, groaning in imagined pain, because he had convinced himself that some evil magic was being worked upon him. She slithered through the leaf litter until she was entirely coated in filth, and well camouflaged against the forest floor. Slowly, carefully, she crept beneath the brambles, holding her breath so she wasn’t accidently caught on a thorn.
When she reached the edge of the clearing, she looked back. Fifty elves were running about confusedly, shouting angrily at the magicians who were making themselves magically invisible in the surrounding forest. One elf was calmly polishing the crown. The two females were frantically weaving another moss sheet. Three more were being magically tortured. She slipped out beneath the vines.
Here she ran into trouble. The brambles were thicker outside the clearing. She could see the iridescent blue poison dripping from the thorns. She had no idea where she was. The path Sammy had forged on his rescue mission had either disappeared, or entered the other side of the clearing, because it was nowhere in sight. She pushed on regardless, because at that moment she thought dying painfully, and alone, strangled by poison brambles in an evil forest across the sea from home, was preferable to spending another moment in the company of creatures that made noises like that.
There was no path through, so she made one, pulling the brambles aside, grabbing them in the bare spaces between the thorns and yanking. This worked well for about half a metre. Then she miscalculated the distance between two thorns, and a drop of poison touched her hand. She stumbled, shaking it off, and fell full length into the thorn bush.
It hurt. Everywhere. There was sharp, biting pain, where the thorns cut her, and she could feel warm blood trickling down her legs. There was dull, thumping pain, where she had hit the ground, and bruises where forming. But above all, there was searing, burning pain of the poison, where it ran over her skin and seeped into her wounds. She screamed and screamed, tears washing her face.
The elves began to sing. It was a horrendous noise, designed to distract a magician to the point where he cannot use his magic because he is curled up in the foetal position with his hands over his ears. “We will come for you... we will come for you... with trees and vines and poisoned arrows... knives and spears and clubs... we will come for you...”
The forest sprang to attention and began to move. The brambles that had caught Celia twisted up to form a cage. Trees formed a circle around it, vines twisting around. She was well and truly trapped, but did not notice because she was too busy screaming in pain.
Why did I run? She wondered. I could have been a queen. I could have worn a crown and bossed the elves around. I could have controlled the forest. And then the pain overcame her, and she fainted.
Unsurprisingly, the elves did not find the magician. When they found Celia in the cage, they were very angry. They took her roughly back to the coronation clearing. They gave her the antidote, forced her into a silver green dress, and sat her on the throne. The coronation was beginning.
Celia was still a bit groggy. She remembered it had taken Sammy days to recover from the poison, and he still wasn’t back to normal. Obviously the elf antidote was more effective than the one Sammy had been given. She did not feel any pain from the moment the antidote was given. She was, however, slightly dizzy. It felt like the world was going in fast forward around her, and she could not move to get out of the way. So she sat on the throne and watched as the elves formed two almost invisible lines on either side of a long carpet of most. She watched as the leader advanced slowly up the aisle, circle of silver leaves in outstretched hands. She sat still and silent, as the crown was placed upon her head, and bound there. And as she felt the crown of leaves bind itself to her, weaving through her hair, she felt something else. Power.
Celia had never had power. Her father had ruled the farm with an iron fist, and had never listened to her. Even on this journey she had felt powerless. The boys were willing to follow her lead when she had a sensible plan, but they all knew she wasn’t really in charge. Nobody in the world could stop Sammy when he decided to do something, and Barney, in his own way, was just as stubborn. Now, before her, lay a sea of faces who watched her expectantly, waiting for her command as coerced queen of the elves. They didn’t seem particularly bright either, which she took as a plus. They would do anything she told them, as long as she didn’t try to escape, suggest cutting down the forest, or use any magic. She didn’t think she would have any trouble following those self-imposed guidelines, because experience had taught her that escape was impossible, the trees, when angered, were terrifying, and that she was entirely lacking in any form of magical ability. But she knew what she wanted to do as queen.
And so, Celia, Queen of Elves, began to plan.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)