CHAPTER 32
MOUNTAIN STRUGGLE
Higher on Goth Mountain Johnny and Ned sensed the approach of Evil. Further away, he knew that Two Bears was already battling another evil, the evil of human greed and destruction. He knew this from both the telepathic messages of Two Bears and his mother, and from a great surge in the forest life force. Many shape-shifting People also defended the forest with Two Bears, he was glad to sense, including Fen.
The disturbance that approached him was a very negative one. It at first seemed subtle, but when he extended his senses to examine it more closely he encountered an impenetrable black, sickly, chaotic, lifeless stench.
“Dark is coming, Johnny,” said Dooley gravely, before Johnny could voice a warning. “Now.”
Johnny nodded and motioned Dooley and Elizabeth to get behind him. “Ned, you and I will shield Elizabeth and Dooley from attack,” he instructed.
“I doubt it,” said a too familiar voice. Dark stood on the path approaching the Cube, clothed in full, blackened, metallic armor, complete with a drawn, meter-long sword. He looked like a medieval knight. “I was hoping for another unicorn, but you’ll do for a start, humans.”
Johnny sensed that iron formed the armor, and something more. “Damn,” he couldn’t help muttering, when he realized what it was. It was unicorn-material, like the watches and knives. Though it seemed to be inactive, it still had to be super-tough and perhaps even more impervious to psychic sorts of attacks than iron.
Dark sprang towards them swiftly, sword glistening and armor clunking.
Johnny mentally pushed against Dark as hard as he could, but it slowed him only slightly. He also tried to telekinetically lift him off the ground, but to no avail. Weight wasn’t the biggest problem. It was the iron and unicorn material of the armor, Johnny quickly realized. The armor seemed slippery to his powers; most of his telekinetic ‘pushing’ seemed to be sliding right off the strange metal.
Dark was almost on top of him before Johnny switched tactics, lifting a ten-kilogram rock and physically throwing it at the advancing knight, then continuing to push the rock mentally. It worked; though Johnny couldn’t get a good mental grip on the iron suit, he had no trouble controlling the rock as it pushed against Dark’s chest, bringing the evil elemental to a dead stop for the moment. Quickly, Johnny added several additional rocks.
“You’ll need to do better than that, human,” stated Dark, as with difficulty he steadily pushed towards Johnny, to almost within sword-reach.
Ned in grizzly bear form attempted to close on Dark, but was driven back easily by the wickedly welded sword of the elemental. The wounded bear slipped back near Elizabeth to heal his wounds.
“I’ll cut you to bits and eat you, shape shifter, after I’ve finished with wolf boy here,” boasted Dark, as he turned his attack again fully on Johnny. “Recognize my sword, boy? Until a short time ago it was a unicorn horn. My entire armor is a combination of iron and unicorn horns, collected over a hundred centuries. With each horn lost, the unicorns were weakened, and lost more memories of their past.”
“You were one of them once, weren’t you?” asked Johnny. “One of the People gone rogue?”
“Perceptive, Goth,” sneered Dark. “But I’m more than that now, Goth. That’s enough talk. It’s time to finish you and then them off once and for all.”
Johnny again met the attack with rocks, pushing back on Dark and blocking sword blows with them. He wished now that he had a proper weapon to counter the sword, but he had none. He had a notion that Dark’s iron and unicorn horn blade would cut through knife or watch, just as it had sliced through poor Baldor.
"Ael tou yuama! Ael tou yuama, kannsor,” intoned Dooley, in another attempt to drive Dark away, but there seemed to be no effect. The iron and unicorn horn armor apparently shielded Dark from Dooley’s powers as well.
Elizabeth physically threw smaller rocks at Dark, in a hopeless attempt to distract him. She also kept an eye on the Cube, which at the moment showed a deserted, peaceful scene, completely at odds with the desperate battle occurring in her own universe.
For a moment when she saw a big Indian appear behind Dark she thought it was Two Bears, but her elation was short lived.
“Hello Johnny,” said the all too familiar voice. “Got your squaw back again alive, I see, so you figured how the Source works, like your daddy and uncle did.” Small Bear was carrying a large tarp-wrapped bundle that he dropped to the ground and quickly doused with a large canteen full of clear liquid. “I should have done this to both bodies when I originally found them near the Cube, and taken the watches, but at the time I wanted them each found dead and my secrets kept, and I was afraid of the watches.”
Small Bear pointed at the bundle and it burst into intense flame as he roared with laughter. “It's a good power that I have, Johnny, starting fires. Better than any of yours. It worked at the Healing Place really good for me, so good that the gasoline was only to confuse things. My fire starting powers are going to work fine on the entire Holy Forest after I’m done here. The Great Tree will make quite a grand fire, won’t it? But right now you can say goodbye to your Uncle Mort.”
It was the doppelganger Mort body, recovered from its cemetery grave site, that Small Bear had put on the ground and torched. Fuming himself, Johnny took a few steps towards the grinning Indian and nearly got cut in two by Dark.
While Johnny dodged Dark’s sword and struggled to reposition his telekinetically controlled rocks, Small Bear lobbed what looked like a two-quart paper milk carton beyond them and towards the Cube. In moments the second bundle of remains burst into flame. “Say goodbye to your daddy too, Johnny,” shouted Small Bear gleefully. “Even if you find them in the Cube, you’ll have no doppelganger remains to trade for them. When I moved the bodies away from the Cube I thwarted their recovery only temporarily, but now they are lost forever!”
The Mark Goth doppelganger remains were also engulfed in flame. Elizabeth pulled off her jacket and attacked the flames, trying to beat them down, but was repelled by the intense heat. Ned, still badly wounded though healing quickly, could only grunt his disapproval.
“It's a special napalm sort of stuff I got from Fenster, Johnny,” said Small Bear, laughing gleefully. “Both bodies are already gone. Without their doppelgangers there’s no way to get either of them back through the Cube now. Oh, and I saved some napalm for you and Dooley. I want nothing left of you two except your watch and his knife. With those totems I’ll be able to get rid of Uncle Two Bears for good.” He lobbed another milk-carton-like container towards Johnny and Dooley. “Then I’ll use your squaw as I kill her slow.”
Johnny withdrew his telekinetic push from Dark and redirected it at the container that flew towards him, which burst into flame as it flew far from the battle.
Unimpeded, Dark charged at Johnny, but was bowled over by the massive Bear that was Ned. With claws and fangs, Ned tore the sword from Dark’s hand, but the bear was soon being knocked senseless by Dark’s metal clad fists.
As the stunned Ned-bear shrank to goat-man form, Johnny launched a flying drop-kick at Dark, knocking the evil elemental to the ground and away from Dooley, but leaving himself also lying on the ground and looking down the barrel of a rifle held by Small Bear. “No more games Goth,” the Indian said simply, as he pulled the trigger.
The rifle barrel was knocked downward as it discharged by a Dooley Simple flying tackle, and the deadly shot went into the ground in front of Johnny.
Small Bear recovered quickly, and sent the already dazed Dooley sprawling into Johnny with a powerful kick before again taking aim with the rifle at Johnny. Even as Johnny began to again focus on deflecting the expected shot, Small Bear’s entire body shuttered and the rifle dropped completely out of his limp hands. Wide eyed, Small Bear looked down in astonishment at the half a meter-long length of bloody sword that protruded from his chest. Before he could collapse he was turned around and seized roughly by his shirt and held up by a metal-gloved hand.
The small patches of human-like skin and clothing that Johnny could see behind Dark’s armor, about the neck and eyes and arm joints, suddenly became black and hairy, and seemed to expand, filling the armored suit beyond it’s intended capacity with Dark’s bestial werewolf form. The wolf creature ripped off his helmet to expose a canine head, long, fang filled jaws, and red, soulless eyes, and laid back, pointed, canine ears. Then with a mighty roar he charged at Johnny, despite Johnny’s best efforts to block him using rocks under his powers.
The armor clad werewolf’s charge stalled after only a few steps, as several inch-thick vines wrapped around him, and actually began to pull him away from Johnny. “Ael tou yuama tor! Ael tou yuama tor, feltar,” shouted Dooley, using words that echoed his thoughts but imperfectly. More vines moved slowly towards Dark from where they climbed cliff and tree.
As Dark roared in anger, raw energy erupting from his claw tips rapidly burned away the vines. A second blast of pure destructive power erupted from one of his clawed hands and sent Johnny to his knees, even though much of the blast had been absorbed by his watch.
“It’s them,” exclaimed Elizabeth somewhere behind him, “in the Cube!”
Johnny only had time to glance at the Cube, before dodging a mighty sword blow from Dark, but that one brief moment was enough for him to recognize both his father Mark and his Uncle Mort, standing together in the Cube, pressed against it impotently as they watched him battle Dark.
This was the chance Johnny had been hoping for, a chance that would only last a few minutes, but what could he do? The doppelgangers needed for the exchange were gone, and whatever chance might remain was being stolen by Dark! Still on his knees, Johnny screamed with rage and effort as with all his strength he transported a man-sized boulder weighing half a ton over Dark and dropped it on him.
Instead of crushing the wolf-creature the massive bolder shattered into dozens of pieces as it broke over the monsters’ head, which glowed and flashed with power. “No more, human,” announced Dark, his voice thunderous. “You die now!”
The creature used his own telekinetic powers on Johnny, such that all Johnny could do is stagger to his feet awkwardly as Dark lifted his sword with both hands and struck downward powerfully, to slice Johnny in two.
Exhausted, Johnny managed to move only a football sized rock above his head as protection but Dark’s iron and horn blade came to a clanging stop before even reaching it, as if it had hit an invisible, impenetrable barrier.
“Pru,” said Johnny, in surprise and relief, as the glowing spiral horn that had stopped the sword became visible, followed by the rest of the unicorn to which it was attached.
“Impossible!” roared Dark. “No unicorn can stop my blade of iron and unicorn horn!”
“I am not simply a unicorn, evil one, and you are not yet fully an elemental,” said Pru coldly. “Creature born of hate; you should have fled when you could.” White flame shot from the luminous blue tinted horn, melting the sword from Dark’s hands, then cascading over the entire armored wolf-man. The creature wavered but did not fall, though in moments his entire armored suit melted away into smoldering rivulets and glowing white gobs. “You also should not have presumed to attack Baldor.”
Dark gathered his singed, smoking, wolfen shape and sprang at Pru, screaming in rage.
A thunderous white blast of energy met the creature in mid-air and slammed him back onto the ground, followed by wave after wave of searing power that surged from Pru’s horn into Dark.
Dark’s screams of agony were quickly extinguished, as the creature was reduced by Pru’s irresistible white flames to a squirming mass of black, then to a shrinking, motionless, formless black cinder, and finally to nothing but a few wisps of smoke that dissipated in the wind. Around him puddles of iron from the armor still glowed red, but hundreds of pure white marbles also covered the ground where Black had last stood.
“That was as quick and as merciful an end as I could provide him,” pathed Pru.
Johnny turned his attention to the Cube. The battle was over, but an equally daunting problem now immediately faced them.
“Those are the right Mark and Mort, Johnny,” shouted Elizabeth, who stood near the Cube holding a marker board. “I’ve been exchanging information with them. But there is only a minute and a half left before the next Cube change, and we have no doppelgangers to exchange for them.”
“Pru, it’s up to you and Dooley,” pathed Johnny. “Did the Council agree to let you try?”
“No, young Goth, but I overruled them. As you say, this is a matter for me and for our young shaman friend.” The unicorn lowered its horn until it almost rested on Dooley’s shoulder. “Grasp my horn, Tree Talker, and focus on the Cube.”
“OK, I been doing some of that already,” said Dooley. He grasped the blue glowing, spiral horn in his left hand and reached out towards the Cube with his right hand and with his mind.
In two steps Dooley was touching the Cube’s surface. He closed his eyes and further opened his mind to the Cube. Just as he thought, the horn and the Cube wall were very similar. The Cube, however, was radiating something that subtly made Dooley feel stronger and smarter than he had ever felt before, while the unicorn radiated something more like raw power.
“Help me become as the Cube,” said Pru’s voice in Dooley’s mind.
“Be more like the forest,” advised Dooley. “Like trees and animals feel.”
“Yes, I see now,” agreed Pru. “It is what we unicorns do to help forests flourish. But something is missing. I am not strong enough.”
“She needs the remains of the other unicorns!” Elizabeth said. “It’s little parts of her, just like the watches and knives. She scooped handfuls of the glowing white marbles from the ground where Dark had fallen and rushed them to Pru. When she held them against the unicorn’s white flank they seemed to simply disappear into her.
Johnny reached out to the hundreds of white marble-like spheres that were still of the ground and willed them to fly to the unicorn, where they also were readily absorbed.
Dooley could feel Pru alter herself as she grew in size and brightness. His hand on the Cube began to tingle, and he thought that there was the tiniest give to the surface. Mort held his hand opposite to his, and mouthing encouragements.
“That’s a little too much,” said Dooley. “You have to make yourself be a little bit more like a regular unicorn.”
“A bit more like normal matter. Yes, it has been a long time, but I remember how to do this now,” pathed Pru. “As I become whole my memory returns, along with my strength.”
He felt the change in the unicorn, and then felt it spread into himself.
“That’s it,” said Dooley, “you and the Cube, you both feel the same.” But he was puzzled. He pushed on the Cube with his hand and it still had almost no give. He had expected that when Pru was tuned to the Cube, he would be able to push his hand through to Mort’s.
“You will be able to do so in a moment, Dooley,” pathed Pru. “You must then reach in and grasp Mort and pull him through. You must do it. I must at all costs keep from touching the Cube myself.”
Suddenly everything around Dooley seemed to dim, except for Pru and the Cube world. At the same time, the Cube wall seemed to completely disappear and the young apprentice shaman found himself reaching freely for Mort’s wrist. Mort
was still standing at the Cube wall, but Dooley’s first attempt failed when his hand passed through Mort’s hand as if it were a shadow.
“Again!” pathed Pru.
The second time Dooley was easily able to grasp old Mort’s wrist and pull him towards Pru. There was resistance for a moment at what must have been the Cube wall, and then Mort and Dooley both tumbled into Johnny, who had recovered somewhat from his battle with Dark and was waiting for them with open arms.
“Hi, Uncle Mort,” said Johnny.
“Johnny, you’re the answer to our prayers,” said his grinning uncle, as he hugged Johnny. “We'll talk later though boy, we have less than a minute to get your dad out.”
“Twenty seconds,” confirmed Elizabeth. “Reach in again, Dooley.”
Dooley and Pru worked even faster in retrieving Mark Goth. With moments to spare Johnny and his father were hugging and laughing, while Ned climbed all over the two of them. Meanwhile Pru slowly moved away from the Cube, though she appeared to be struggling to do so, as if the Cube was trying to pull her to it.
“Mark!” said a familiar female voice.
Mark Goth released Johnny and turned to catch his wife Ann as she ran and leapt into his welcoming arms.
A grinning Great Two Bears had arrived with her, and the big shaman embraced three Goths, parents and son, and lifted them all up and hugged them together in his giant arms, quieting them all for several moments due to their lack of breath.
“It was far too close a thing, all of it,” the shaman said soberly, after he had put them down and also greeted his old friends Mort, Dooley and Ned. “Black Knife has the invaders in tow and is escorting them off of Goth land, including Ms Winters. The news media is grilling Fenster about payoffs he gave a county Judge and others in order to accelerate the attempted tree-grab and to ignore the fact that since I live, Small Bear could not have legally spoken for the Tribe when he signed over logging rights to Fenster. Artistic License folks are being hailed as heroes for helping to stop a miscarriage of justice and for providing first aid to loggers, police, and National Guard troops who suffered mostly from superficial bug and animal bites and scratches.”
“And of course, Dark is but a bad memory,” added Johnny.
“And we have suffered serious losses among some of our animal friends, but we have won, at least for now,” concluded the shaman.
“What made the difference were the next generation shaman and Goth,” noted Pru.
“Including Elizabeth, of course,” added Great Two Bears.
“Very glad to meet you,” said Mark, as he gave Elizabeth a quick hug. “I met several of your counterparts in other worlds, and generally they were very nice. You and Johnny are married?”
“Not quite yet,” she replied. “We’ve been sort of busy.” She was amazed at how similar Johnny and his father looked. Mark Goth looked a few pounds heavier and only a decade or so older than Johnny, and sported a mustache, but the resemblance was uncanny.
“This is yours, Dad,” said Johnny. He handed the gold watch to his father.
Mark Goth received it with a smile, enclosed it within his big right hand, and gave a little nod to Pru, who was watching attentively. “And this is yours, White Wolf, guardian of Goth Mountain.” He opened his hand to reveal not one but two watches, and handed one of them back to a smiling Johnny.
The young Goth examined it eagerly. Pru’s likeness was on the front, and his own was on the back, as he expected.
“A grownup Johnny image,” noted Mark. “When I saw Small Bear removing Mort’s doppelganger from nearby the Cube I realized what had happened to my own all those years ago. Moving the doppelganger bodies away from the Cube and putting them near the One Tree was Small Bear's way of both getting rid of us and incriminating the People. I have to admit that I thought we were both lost forever, watches and all.”
“It took a re-assembled Pru and a legion of Dooleys to finally get to you,” said Johnny.
"Tons of Dooleys," noted the grinning apprentice shaman.
“I feel so guilty,” said Ann, looking into Mark’s eyes. “If I had not given up so quickly, you could have been home years ago.”
“I’m just happy to be home now,” said Mark. “Very happy. It is more likely that years ago you would have also lost yourself in other universes. Mort had many of the answers but he got lost anyway, due largely to the betrayal by Small Bear.”
“We could all share in such guilt, and it would all be misplaced,” said Two Bears. “There is one who may deserve the most blame but has paid a terrible price for his hate.” He bent over the bloody body of his nephew Small Bear, retrieved a gold watch, and after wiping it clean from blood on his shirt returned it to old Mort.
“Small Bear hid his hate so long and so well that even as he shot me, I could not comprehend what was happening. He truly had powers, but he hid them and used them for evil, and was always withdrawn and sullen. Thinking back, all the warning hints were there, if only I had looked closely enough.” A big tear ran down one of his weathered cheeks.
“If only any of us had,” echoed Mort. “But we aren’t any of us perfect, not by a long shot.”
“True, humans,” agreed Pru. “Not even unicorns. But it would be a dull existence if there were any such thing as perfection. We can all only strive towards what we imagine it to be.”
“That was wisely said,” volunteered Elizabeth. “I’m not even officially a Tribe member yet, and he did try to kill me more than once, but I think Small Bear should get a full Tribal funeral, whatever that is.”
“I agree,” said Johnny.
A hint of a smile flickered across Two Bear’s sad face as he nodded his own agreement.
“And Baldor too,” added Dooley.
“I would prefer not to be buried,” pathed a voice that ended in a whinny. “At least not yet.” On the path coming up the mountain strode Baldor, whole and glowing with health. He even sported a glowing horn!
Equally astonishing, an exuberant Professor Fred Simple sat high upon the huge mythical creature’s back. “Something came over me at the cabin,” Fred explained. “I had an impulse to walk into the woods, resulting in my finding the remains of my friend here. I wanted to see what the whole creature had looked like, and I started fitting him together like a jigsaw puzzle.
“Part way through, he started talking to me in my head. To make a long story short, here we are, and Dooley and I are to go to the place where he comes from to meet more of his folks. An old academic friend of mine named Gus is going to collaborate with me on translating some mysterious ancient tablets, and someone named Gor is supposed to talk with us about building a log house on Goth Mountain for me and Dooley. Oh, and there will be several berry pies involved also, I’m told.”
“It is well that this one found me when he did,” pathed Baldor to all those who could hear. “My remaining life force was dwindling.”
Pru whinny-laughed, and Dooley hooted in surprise as he floated through the air and onto her back. “It is well than that I placed the thought in Doc Simple’s mind to perform the rescue,” Pru pathed to everyone, as she trotted to join the great stallion and his plump little passenger. “We’ll visit the Land now with the Simples, and be back soon.”
When the two unicorns met they stood for some time with heads and horns pressing and rubbing together, silver-gold tails and manes thrashing, and horns glowing bright as flashes of lightning danced between them. By some unknown empathic effect, the whole area seemed to be flooded with happiness, increasing even further the grins of the humans present. Finally, with the Simples on their backs, the two unicorns lightly pranced past the One Tree and disappeared into the solid rock of Goth Mountain.
With the departure of the effervescent unicorns and Simples the mood again sobered. Two Bears, the Goths and the future Mrs. Johnny Goth picked up the bloody body of Small Bear and solemnly carried it down the mountain, their victories and joyful reunions sobered by both his loss and the bitterness of his betray
al.
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Secrets of Goth Mountain Page 78