Sagaria

by John Dahlgren

  “I think we’ve finally managed to outrun the worgs,” he said.

  Samzing collapsed onto a scrubby bank, jolting every tooth in Flip’s jaw. “I think we outran them some time ago, old dear,” he gasped. “I haven’t heard the sound of pursuit for at least an hour, perhaps two.”

  Flip popped his head queasily from the wizard’s robe pocket. There was enough moonlight for him to see that they were in another small glade. The trees seemed younger and leafier than the ones they’d been among yesterday.

  The Frogly Knight was sitting on an old, rotted tree stump, his hands on his knees, his head low over his chest. “Yes, well, it’s wise to be safe.”

  “If you say so,” whimpered Samzing. He was staring up through the branches at the sky. A fluffy white cloud seemed to be mocking them.

  “We should be well out of worg territory by now,” continued Sir Tombin, beginning to recover. “They’re not likely to dare follow us here, even if they know where we are.”

  “What kind of creatures live here then, if they frighten even worgs?” asked Flip pessimistically.

  “Opposomes.”

  “Opposomes?”

  “The most maddening, infuriating, exasperating people in all of Sagaria.”

  “Opposomes, you say, eh?” mused the wizard thoughtfully. “Not just posomes?”

  “No, opposomes. They’re related to posomes, but are not the same. Posomes are, ah, the presentable members of the family, if you get what I mean. Speaking with a posome will drive you only mildly insane.”

  Samzing’s voice assumed a wistful note. “I used to know a posome once. Frightfully decent fellow, he was. Ran a little shop in Spectram selling the most amazing things. I remember once when I was still a student I bought a …”

  From what Sir Tombin had said about posomes, Flip reckoned that Samzing’s once having had dealings with one explained quite a lot. “What are the opposomes like that they’re so maddening?” he said to the Frogly Knight.

  “You really don’t want to know,” replied Sir Tombin heavily. “Just keep your, ah, claws crossed that we don’t meet any.”

  Flip popped out onto the ground as Samzing struggled to his feet. The wizard tottered a few paces, then bent down and picked up a long fallen branch. “This will have to do,” he mumbled as he brushed dirt off it.

  “Do for what?” piped Flip.

  Samzing stripped away a couple of twigs, then propped himself up on the staff he’d made. “Do for leaning on. I’m an old man, remember. I’m not as agile as you youngsters.”

  “But a little while ago, when we were fleeing from the worgs, you were leaping and bounding like a mountain goat.”

  “Ah, yes. Well, there’s a simple explanation for that.”

  “Oh?”

  “I’d forgotten I couldn’t do it.”

  Flip’s bafflement was interrupted by Sir Tombin, who was pacing up and down, surveying the trees around them as if he might learn something. “I’m afraid … I’m afraid I’ve lost my sense of direction.”

  This was as puzzling to Flip as anything Samzing had said. Before he could work it out, however, Sir Tombin was speaking again.

  “Let’s see now. I know we must have started from the north. After that, we turned east, I think. Either east or west, anyway. One of the two. At least I’ve narrowed it down to just two.”

  His words trickled off into nothingness.

  “What about Sagandran and Perima?” said Flip, hoping to cheer everyone up and realizing as soon as he’d asked the question that he’d done exactly the opposite. “And Snowmane. Did anyone see what happened to them?”

  “Last I saw,” replied Samzing, still admiring the staff he’d made, “they were showing the worgs a clean pair of heels. Hm. Since it was Snowmane who was doing the running, I suppose they were really showing the worgs a clean quartet of heels. Never mind, they were escaping anyway. Safe. The horse had just shouldered that big ugly worg, what’s his name?”

  “Bolster.”

  “That’s right, Bolster. Thank you, Flip. The horse had just shoved Bolster smack on his rear end into one of those loathsome bonfires, and he was shouting something like—”

  “He was very angry,” interposed Sir Tombin hurriedly. “I think that’s all we need to know, dear chap.”

  Flip pursued the main issue. “Well, where are they now?”

  “I should think,” said Sir Tombin, scratching his chin, “I should think they’re in the northern part of the Everwoods.”

  “And what about us?”

  “We’re probably in the southwestern part. Or it could be the southeastern part.”

  “A long way away from where they are, you mean?”

  “Not to put too fine a point upon it, young Flip, but yes, you could say that.”

  “So, how are we going to find them? Or how are they going to find us?”

  “That’s just what I’m trying to figure out. They should be safe so long as they don’t get snared by that ghastly amusement park that’s somewhere in those parts.”

  “You could always ask one of the locals where we are,” said Samzing brightly.

  “Yes, old fellow,” said Sir Tombin patiently, “but who?”

  “Well, if it were up to me, I’d start with the chap sitting on that log over there.”

  “Where?”

  “There.” The wizard pointed.

  Following the direction of Samzing’s gnarled finger, Flip saw a chubby little individual, refreshingly not too much larger than he was (well, only three or four times as big). Shaped like a human, he was sitting on a fallen, moss-covered tree and watching them with great interest, his eyes glittering in the moonlight. He was dressed in a russet jerkin and a pair of tattered checked trousers.

  “An opposome,” breathed Sir Tombin. “Of all the rotten luck.”

  “Disgusted to meet you too,” said the little man.

  “Why, you—” began Flip.

  “Hush, Flip, hush,” said Sir Tombin. “You’ll begin to get the hang of it after a while.” To the opposome, he said, “We greet you, fellow traveler through these dark and mysterious woods. Do you perhaps know where we impetuous wayfarers might have found ourselves? We have journeyed far, and are bereft of any conception of the direction in which we might have been progressing.”

  “Eh?” said the opposome, looking as if someone had just punched him in the brain.

  “What my froggish friend means,” said Flip, stepping forward, “is, where are we?”

  The opposome’s face lit up. “Then why didn’t the slimy fat idiot say so?”

  Flip blanched. There was rudeness and there was rudeness (as he knew only too well from the time the farmer Fofa had imbibed too industriously of the year’s first crop of strong cider and started telling everyone what he really thought of them), but this stranger seemed intent on transcending even Fofa’s high standards of insult.

  “Easy, Flip,” said Sir Tombin softly. “It’s just his way of speaking. I told you, you’ll get used to it. Remember, we don’t want to antagonize him. With luck, he’ll be able to tell us how to get back to a part of the forest I know.”

  Flip took a deep breath. Sometimes it seemed to him that the greatest unfairness about being small was that there was so much less of you to keep your temper in. Still, he’d try.

  “Where are we?” he repeated.

  “Ah, time for the little twit with the silly pink tip on his nose to ask, is it?”

  Flip gritted his teeth. “Yes,” he said.

  The opposome gave an exaggerated shrug. “Well, duh. How do you think I’d know, stupid?”

  “We were just hoping.”

  “Well, I don’t know the answer to your lamebrained question, but someone in my village might. Come with me.” He jumped down off the log and beckoned them. “Assuming the old geezer with the stick is actually still alive, that is.”

  Samzing sputtered, but fortunately, none of his sputterings came out as words.

  “You can call me Willf
ram,” said the opposome, as if conferring a great privilege on a lower lifeform. “It’s my name, in case that’s not clear to you.”

  They did their best to keep up with Willfram as he leaped nimbly from rock to rock and stump to stump, occasionally casting a glance over his shoulder to make sure they were still following. He seemed to be able to see perfectly well in the wan moonlight; Sir Tombin and Samzing, being not so lucky, tripped and stumbled a lot.

  Flip, perched in the brim of Sir Tombin’s plumed hat, whispered down to the Frogly Knight, “You were right about them being exasperating. We’ve only exchanged a few sentences and I already want to stick his head up the rear end of a worg.”

  “Just … just tolerate it, Flip. He’s really being extremely friendly to us. In his fashion. In the opposome fashion. Believe me, this is really quite mild compared to what opposomes can sometimes be like.”

  The thought chilled Flip’s blood. “You mean, they get worse?”

  “Believe me, they do. I once heard an opposome make a proposal of marriage. I had to wash my ears out every hour for a week.”

  Flip gulped. “Bad, was it?”

  It took hours for the opposome village to come into view. Seeing it there in the early light of morning, nestling between two wooded hills on the far side of a shallow but vigorously frothing river, reminded Flip poignantly of his home in Mishmash. Would he ever walk through the lanes of Mishmash again? The only major difference he could see from this distance was that, dotted here and there were some big structures he recognized as windmills among the rooftops. There was something wrong with the form of their sails though. Instead of being straight, they were twisted into all sorts of improbably crooked shapes. He shrugged. All would doubtless be explained in due course.

  Willfram paused by the near end of a rickety-looking bridge and waited for them to draw closer. “For the benefit of any of you who’re even dimwitteder than the rest, that’s my village, Reversa, over there. Don’t just stand there looking like regurgitated prunes. Come on.”

  He scampered out to the middle of the bridge and paused there, again waiting for them. His foot tapped impatiently.

  Sir Tombin was the first to put a foot onto the bridge. It rocked beneath his weight, creaking ominously, the ropes supporting it making a dull throbbing sound, like the plucked string of a double bass.

  “Is it strong enough for me?” he called ahead to Willfram.

  “It’s strong enough for anyone,” said the opposome with a derisive laugh, “no matter how grossly obese they might be.”

  Sir Tombin took another step.

  “Perhaps if I climbed down off you?” suggested Flip.

  “Wouldn’t make any difference,” muttered Sir Tombin tersely. “Don’t worry too much, Flip. Remember, even if this bridge collapsed, I’m a frog. I can swim.”

  “Oh. Yes.” Flip didn’t like to remind him that he, Flip, couldn’t.

  “Oh, stop being such a scaredy-pants,” yelled the opposome. “This is the best bridge in the whole wide world. Look!”

  He began jumping up and down on it to demonstrate. As if obeying an unknown script, a plank promptly gave way beneath him with a loud rending sound, and he vanished with a wail of misery into the gap. All that could be seen of him were his fingers, tightly gripping the splintered edge.

  Moving as quickly as he could while exercising caution, Sir Tombin moved forward until he was able to reach down and grasp the opposome’s arm.

  “No damage done, I trust,” said the Frogly Knight, depositing Willfram on a safer bit of bridge.

  “Our bridge has never done that before,” said the opposome crossly. “Must be all the strain of having to bear the weight of a dietician’s nightmare, and a clammy amphibian nightmare at that.”

  Flip couldn’t keep the words back. “That ‘amphibian’ just saved your life.”

  “Yeah, right. To put it another way, he almost killed me, being so fat.”

  Sir Tombin put a hand gently over Flip’s mouth.

  They reached the far side of the bridge without mishap. A sign there read:

  Flip supposed it was the opposome equivalent of a “welcome sign.

  As they made their way along a twisted path toward the village, progressing in the peculiar hurry-and-stop-and-hurry-again manner that Willfram seemed to prefer, it became more and more obvious just how curious a place Reversa was. Everywhere Flip looked, he could see machines. He couldn’t even begin to guess at the purposes of most of them, but there was one suspended beneath an upstairs window that was clearly intended to increase the speed with which the clothes on the line beside it dried. Another device, which resembled a giant wooden spider with about twenty times as many legs as it should have had, clattered along the path ahead of them picking up windblown leaves. Flip made a resolution to steer well clear of any such devices he might encounter; all sorts of other objects were being scooped up and devoured along with the leaves, and he didn’t much fancy being one of them.

  “The opposomes,” explained Sir Tombin to his two friends in a quiet tone, “are dedicated to invention and engineering. If there’s something that needs to be done, some opposome or other will sooner or later devise a mechanism for doing it. Except that you most often find it would be easier to do whatever it was if you didn’t have to use the machine.”

  They were among the streets now. The day had hardly begun, yet there were plenty of opposomes around and every one they saw seemed industriously engaged in constructive activity, as if they’d been hard at work for hours. The opposomes looked up curiously as Willfram led the strangers among them, but soon returned to their tasks: tightening nuts, screwing in screws or simply threatening bits of machinery with a hammer and a lot of bad language.

  Willfram waved Samzing and Sir Tombin to a halt in front of a house that was much bigger than most of the others, and certainly more ramshackle. Whoever had built it seemed to have been incapable of getting any two surfaces at right angles to each other, and none of those surfaces or edges were straight. All over the front and sides there were mysterious protrusions that appeared to be supported by little more than faith and the occasional nail or piece of sticking tape. The window shutters hung loosely. One of the building’s several doors was a full ten feet off the ground. Of the house’s five visible chimneys, two stuck out horizontally.

  “This is the house of the Great Inventor,” announced Willfram proudly. “You’re probably too plebeian to recognize its beauty, but it’s something you can at least hope to aspire to.”

  Flip felt Sir Tombin’s gulp very close to him. “It’s certainly, well, different,” said the Frogly Knight diplomatically as they gazed up at the chaotic structure.

  Willfram walked to the front door and knocked three times.

  On the third knock, there was a squeaking sound and the door collapsed inward with a heavy crash.

  “It’s supposed to do that,” said Willfram staunchly, leading them inside.

  They found themselves in a small, cluttered room. Strange devices lay everywhere. Odd pieces of apparatus, some smoking or steaming, lay on or beside laboratory-style benches (or even on the floor, having fallen off them). The only illumination, aside from the small windows, was a naked light bulb hanging from the cobweb-festooned ceiling; it fizzed and blinked dizzyingly.

  It took them a little while to realize that they were not alone. On top of a large, boxy machine sat a small figure with a pointed hat not unlike Samzing’s, but even more battered out of shape. He had a long gray beard like the wizard’s too; it was counterbalanced at the back by an equally greasy-looking pony tail. He raised his eyes suspiciously to glance at the newcomers, then went back to what he was doing, his dirty, bandage-covered hands fiddling with an object consisting of a blown-glass globe with wires sticking out of it in unlikely places.

  Willfram looked at him in reverence.

  “Great Inventor, I found this motley group crashing through the forest like dung beetles in search of a quagmire.”

  T
his time the Great Inventor paused a little longer. “Wouldn’t you have been better leaving them where they were? Somewhere, villages must be worried about losing their idiots.”

  “They said they needed help. You know it is the duty of all opposomes to give help to those who ask it, no matter how physically repulsive and synaptically challenged the askers might be.”

  “True, true,” said the Great Inventor, squishing his fingers through his beard. “I’m surprised you were able to keep your stomach content in place when you saw their faces. What help is it they want?”

  “They need to find their way out of the forest.” Willfram hesitated for dramatic effect. “I’m sure the forest would be grateful to us if we helped them on their way with all good speed.”

  “Well, certainly I would,” mused the Great Inventor.

  “They don’t just look bad,” added Willfram. “They’re completely lacking in all the civilized graces. I’ve had not so much as an allusion to my lack of recorded parentage out of them since we met.”

  Flip finally came to the boil. “Now, look here, you abysmal apology for an extremely short human being—”

  Unexpectedly, Willfram and the Great Inventor smiled.

  “Ah, that’s better,” said Willfram. “They do know some good manners.”

  “Well,” qualified the Great Inventor, “the little one with the snotty nose does, anyway. Pity about the other two.”

  Samzing growled. “That’s it. I’d wring your neck, you rude old toad, if your halitosis would let me near enough.”

  A look of bliss crossed the Great Inventor’s face. “Much better. I’m still not going to tell you how to get out of the forest though.”

  “Why not, fatface?” Sir Tombin tried in his turn to get the hang of the opposomes’ mode of speech, but failed miserably. “Oh, look, I hope you don’t mind that I said that, dear fellow.”

  The Great Inventor glowered.

  “Let me take charge of the negotiations,” said Samzing to Sir Tombin determinedly. There was a sparkle in the old wizard’s eye. Louder, he continued, “What’s the trouble? You too pig-ignorant to know the answer?”