Fairy Metal Thunder (Songs of Magic, Book 1)

by JL Bryan

  Chapter Twenty

  Aoide and her three bandmates stumbled through the black forest of the Hauntlands, trying to see by the occasional stripe of blue moonlight shining through the dense branches overhead. The only sounds were the spooky calls of a who-owl, and the occasional grunting and snorting of unknown creatures in the darkness. Aoide wanted to jump every time a low branch or a high weed brushed her leg.

  “We should have brought a firefly lantern,” Rhodia whispered at one point. “Or at least a sunflower. I can’t see a thing.”

  “Sh!” Skezg whispered. “Don’t attract attention.”

  They walked quietly for a few more hours, whispering when they had to talk to each other, like when they crossed a slippery, mushroom-covered log over a brook.

  Then the trail ended. They found themselves on the edge of a vast open space that stretched to the horizon. Above, they could see the stars and the pale shapes of the blue and purple moons. The silver moon wasn’t visible at all, so the night was dim.

  Aoide cautiously stepped a toe into the dark open field. The ground felt soft and damp.

  “What do we do?” Neus asked. “What happened to the road?”

  “Some road,” Rhodia said. “It was more like an overgrown mouse-trail.”

  “I’m scared,” Skezg said.

  “We just keep going forward,” Aoide said. She pawed around with her bare foot. “The field’s divided into rows. If we just pick one row and follow it across, we won’t get turned around.”

  “Good idea, Aoide,” Neus said.

  “Stop being such a kiss-up, Neus,” Rhodia said.

  “Why are you so snappy?” the faun asked.

  “No, you’re right, goat-breath,” Rhodia said. “Because getting us lost way out in the Hauntlands where there’s no road was a real stroke of genius. Sorry I didn’t see that at first.”

  “Keep your voice down,” Skezg whispered.

  “Did you have a better idea, Rhodia?” Aoide asked.

  Rhodia sighed. “Let’s keep walking, I guess. Until I figure out something else.”

  Nobody wanted to go first, so Aoide took the plunge. She stepped out into the field, keeping her feet in the low trench between two humped-up rows of dirt. Neus followed, then Rhodia, then Skezg.

  Aoide’s foot kicked into something like a large round rock.

  “Ow! Wait, everyone.” Aoide knelt down to touch the thing that had stubbed her toe. It was a little softer than a rock. She found a thick stem on top of it, and she leaned closer and sniffed it.

  “What’s happening?” Skezg asked.

  “I think it's a pumpkin,” Aoide said. She felt ahead and found another one. “We're in a pumpkin patch. Try not to trip on the pumpkins. Or the vines. There are vines all over the ground.”

  “Can someone else walk at the back of the group?” Skezg asked. “I don't like being at the end. Something could sneak up and grab me.”

  “You're the biggest one here, Skezg,” Neus said. “But here, you go ahead and I'll walk behind you.”

  “Oh, thank you! Thank you!”

  Aoide heard shuffling as the faun and the ogre changed places.

  “Are we ready to keep going?” Aoide asked. She stepped ahead carefully, checking for pumpkins and vines.

  They continued onward, but it was slow going. The pumpkins weren't evenly spaced, and sometimes a clump of them grew together, so Aoide had to keep feeling ahead with her foot like she was blind. She whispered back to tell everyone where to expect obstacles.

  After several long minutes, Neus let out a goaty bleat. There was a rustling sound, followed by a series of loud thumps.

  “He's gone!” Skezg shouted. “Guys, Neus is gone! Something happened—”

  “Who dares disturb the pumpkin patch?” a voice asked. Ahead of Aoide, one of the pumpkins glowed with a fiery light. It glowed from several spots—two triangular eyes, a triangular nose, and a jagged, scowling mouth.

  “Yeah, we was sleeping!” Another pumpkin lit up with a carved jack-o'-lantern face. This one was frowning and wore a grumpy expression.

  “What's happening? Somebody's in the patch? Is it pumpkin poachers?” another voice asked.

  “Pumpkin poachers!” yet another voice shouted.

  Pumpkins lit up all around them—angry faces, smiling faces, one girly jack-o'-lantern who appeared to be blowing a kiss.

  “Oh, no!” Rhodia said. “Jack-o’-lanterns!”

  “Who told you to keep quiet this whole time?” Skezg asked. “Was it me? 'Cause I believe it was me.” Then vines sprang up and coiled around the ogre's mouth and arms. They pulled him to the ground and dragged him deeper into the pumpkin patch.

  “Ow! Ow! Ow!” Skezg complained as his big fuzzy head knocked against one pumpkin after another.

  “Let him go!” Aoide yelled at the burning jack-o'-lanterns that surrounded her and Rhodia.

  “You've got a funny voice,” one of them said.

  “Listen to her voice!”

  “'Let him go, let him go!'” another jack-o'-lantern imitated.

  “That's not funny!” Aoide said.

  “'That's not funny!'” The jack-o'-lantern imitated her voice again.

  “We're not here to poach any pumpkins,” Aoide said. “We're just passing through.”

  “Don't you mean trespassing through?” a smiling pumpkin asked.

  “Trespassers make good pumpkin food!” said a pumpkin with a goofy face, who appeared to be sticking out his tongue.

  “Pumpkin food!” all the jack-o'-lanterns roared together.

  “Rhodia, fly!” Aoide jumped into the air, flapping her wings.

  “Huh? Oh!” Rhodia leaped into the air after her, but a vine snaked up and coiled around her ankle. She flapped her wings and stayed off the ground, but the vine was dragging her deeper into the pumpkin patch, the same direction Skezg had gone.

  Aoide circled around and tried to grab the vine from around Rhodia's ankle, but the vine was moving as fast as a racing rabbit, pulling Rhodia far out of reach. Aoide flew as fast as she could, struggling to keep up.

  Then a loud rumbling shook the entire pumpkin patch. Ahead of her, a huge mound of earth swelled up from the ground, with pumpkins rolling away on all sides of it. Pumpkin vines draped the rising mound like thick moss.

  The mound continued to rise, and suddenly the field was illuminated by flickering firelight from two huge triangular eyes, each of them as big as Aoide herself. In the reddish light, Aoide could now see Skezg, Neus, and Rhodia being towed across the field like fishes on lines, bumping against pumpkin after pumpkin. The vines were dragging them towards the swelling mound, where a glowing circular nose hole had just risen from the earth. The rising mound of earth was a gigantic jack-o'-lantern.

  The mouth of the gigantic pumpkin emerged, also filled with firelight, lined with wide, sharp teeth at the top and bottom. Flames billowed out as it spoke two words in a voice loud enough to shake the field.

  “Pumpkin food!” it roared.

  “No!” Aoide flew closer to it. “Let them go!”

  “Pumpkin hungry!” the colossal jack-o'-lantern boomed. Vines shot up from the ground, trying to grab at Aoide, but she flew higher to dodge them.

  On the ground, her three bandmates were dragged closer to the big orange mouth full of billowing flames. Aoide felt the intense heat rolling out of the giant hungry pumpkin mouth.

  A long vine heavy with pumpkins rose from the soil, and then it cracked like a whip. A dozen fat pumpkins hurled at Aoide. She tried to dodge the scattershot of whirling pumpkins, but one crashed right into her head. It felt like she'd been clobbered by sledgehammer. Lights swam in front of Aoide's eyes, and she tumbled toward the earth.

  “Aoide, watch out!” Rhodia cried.

  Aoide slammed into the dirt, landing hard on a small jack-o'-lantern, which split open beneath her. Her hand pressed into the hot mush at the center. Her palm was scorched as it smooshed out the lit
tle flame.

  “Hey, she killed Roger!” a nearby jack-o'-lantern shouted. “She put out his fire!”

  “No, not Roger!” another said.

  “Roger-killer!” A third jack-o'-lantern spat fire out through its mouth, which left its eyes and nose darkened.

  “Get off the ground, Aoide!” Neus shouted.

  Aoide shook her throbbing head. She pushed herself to her shaky feet and fluttered into the air, away from the thrashing vines trying to snag her.

  Below, the vines dragged her friends closer to the giant pumpkin's waiting mouth.

  Aoide sucked on her burned hand. At least she'd taken out one of the pumpkins. That left a few thousand more.

  She looked down and saw the flames inside the giant pumpkin's mouth. They said she'd killed “Roger” by putting out his fire.

  With her free hand, Aoide found the canteen tied to her belt. She raised it to her lips and uncorked it with her mouth.

  Aoide took careful aim at one of the giant pumpkin's big triangular eye holes. She threw it as hard as she could.

  The canteen turned end over end, splashing water everywhere. It caught in a bottom corner of the giant pumpkin's eye, but fortunately it was pointed inward, and it poured out its contents inside the pumpkin's face.

  Its flames shrunk, but didn't extinguish. The giant pumpkin let out an earth-shaking roar.

  “Rhodia!” Aoide shouted. “Throw me your canteen!”

  “I can't!” Rhodia shouted back. Her foot was already inside the giant pumpkin's mouth. “I left it with the slapper fish!”

  “Who's got the biggest canteen?” Aoide asked.

  “Skezg!” Rhodia and Neus shouted.

  The big ogre was on his hands and knees, trying desperately to crawl away from the giant pumpkin's mouth while the vines hauled him closer.

  “Who, me?” Skezg asked.

  “Throw me your canteen!” Aoide said. “Now!”

  “Can’t!” Skezg raised the big corked gourd in one hand, but a vine was pulling his arm back toward the earth.

  Aoide swooped down and grabbed the gourd, but vines snatched her legs and arms. They hauled her towards the giant pumpkin's mouth. All three of her friends were already half inside the mouth, struggling to get free.

  Aoide hurled the big gourd full of water right through the glowing circle of the giant pumpkin's nose.

  There was a loud, wet hiss, and the giant pumpkin howled again. Then its face went dark. The vines clutching Aoide went limp, and she crashed to the ground again.

  “That's better,” Skezg said. He crawled out of the pumpkin's mouth, as did Rhodia and Neus. They started untangling the thick vines that had captured them.

  “Hey, you killed Jack!” one of the nearby pumpkins shouted.

  “Jack-killer!” another one wailed.

  “That was very mean,” a third added.

  “Shut up!” Rhodia said. “He was trying to eat us.”

  “He was hungry,” a pumpkin said.

  “Yeah, don't you ever get hungry?” another asked.

  “Yeah!”

  “Yeah!”

  “Quiet!” Neus shouted. “Or we'll make pumpkin pie out of him. And we’ll roast his seeds.”

  Several jack-o'-lanterns gasped and went dark, looking like normal pumpkins again.

  Neus helped Aoide untangle the vines from her arm and leg.

  “Thanks,” Aoide said. She stood and brushed dirt from her clothes.

  “That was smart thinking,” Neus said.

  “Smart?” a jack-o’-lantern asked. “She murders Old Jack, and you call it smart?”

  “Poor Old Jack,” another said. “He used to tell the best stories.”

  “I miss him already!” a frowny-faced jack-o’-lantern said. Little droplets of fire spilled like tears from his round eyes and fell into the dirt, where they snuffed out.

  More of the jack-o’-lanterns joined in the weeping and crying.

  “Let’s get going,” Aoide said.

  The four of them trooped across the pumpkin patch, while more and more jack-o’-lanterns began crying and wailing.

  “Meanies!” a fat pumpkin shouted as they passed. “You’re just a bunch of big meanies.”

  The four of them kept close as they hurried across the field. More pumpkins shouted and cried as they ran past, flapping their feeble vines in protest. The huge vines that had grabbed them must have died with Old Jack.

  They climbed over a thornwood fence at the end of the pumpkin patch, into a pasture where a herd of glowing green, phantom-like cows stood and snored with their eyes closed. They tiptoed past the strange creatures, and then onward into the night.