The Land of Make Believe

by Michael Arnold

  The new king came out of the seclusion of the trees, sitting on his makeshift iron throne and carried out on it by four of Bodolf’s former flunkies. They set him down in the foyer of the grass where the sun was at is brightest and the wind blew strong and hard. Fenris, once a timid and, at times, a fearful man, walked down the steps of his throne boldly, his gleaming yellow eyes daring a rebellious one beneath his throne to say something out of turn.

  His unflinching stroll moved in harmony with his long burgundy robe that kissed the ground beneath him. “I am Fenris now King of Dark Forest. Bow down and honor your new king,” he yelled. A little hesitant, the wolf-people looked upon each other for a moment of disbelief.

  “I said bow down to me and honor your new king,” Fenris shouted again. His hard and manly coarse voice put instant fear in less than half of the people surrounding the clearing. Yet even in fear, they refused to bow down to this new arrogant dictator. “Give us our leader, Bodolf!” one said.

  “Yea, give us our leader!”

  “Where is our leader? What have you done with him?” A fourth person said.

  After the fourth one spoke, there was another one, who was particularly familiar to Fenris, and who brought herself to the front of the crowd until she squeezed her way several feet away from the throne steps.

  Her name was Riel and in Riel’s large hair covered hands there were eggs. Fenris remembered the eggs and he also remembered what Riel had done with the eggs.

  The flunkies that carried the front of the throne blocked Riel from coming any closer to the throne or Fenris. “What is this? You are no king! Just several days ago, these eggs that I have in my hand, I threw them in his face and told him to get out of the egg shop and to carry on with his duty of delivering the eggs!”

  Riel then turned to her fellow people to get their approval. Approval she got. Some started to laugh then the few turned into many. “Now then if you don’t want a repeat of what happened, dethrone yourself and wherever you and these traders of yours have my Bodolf, you bring him back now!” Riel commanded.

  For a woman, a wolf-woman, but a woman nonetheless, her voice was vigorous and carried way beyond the foyer of Dark Forest. “You want your Bodolf, your weakling of a king, one that instead of making proper preparation for a better Dark Forest, he chose to live in huts, watch you people suffer and taper off into obscurity? Bring out that former and weak king!”

  At Fenris’s command, Bodolf was dragged out from amongst the dark shrubs and trees. His hands were bound behind his back with some witch grass that was treassed into ropes.

  “Bodolf! What have you done to him, untie him now,” Riel screamed.

  One of her arms went up; she held the egg in her hand. She wanted to throw the egg at Fenris and she would have done so, if Fenris was the Fenris in the egg shed or the Fenris he was just hours ago, right before he went to the caves to meet Norvis. But that particular Fenris, scared and timid, was long gone. He was now the Lord of the Dark Forest, powerful, mighty, and unflinching under the blazing sun.

  He held out his rod, the blue light from it struck Riel with one big blast. It took her by surprise. She didn’t feel any pain but what she felt was just as bad as pain. Her arm stiffened. She dropped the eggs, the blue light rushed from the tip of her nails and up her arm. As it coursed along her arm, it shaved all of her hair up to her shoulder.

  “What have you done to me?” Riel shouted in a voice that was now strained and hoarse. Riel literally gasped for strength but there wasn’t any to gain.

  Fenris chuckled with a kind of unspeakable pleasure.

  The wolf-people were in awe, some yelled out in terror as they watched their fellow resident bent over on her knees and Bodolf unable to do anything.

  “Quiet!” Fenris yelled. His voice sounded like the beating of thousands upon thousands of drums. “This is not the end for you. This is the beginning.

  “She wasn’t the only one who wanted their leader; she was the only one who had the boldness to come forth and demand of me to produce her former leader, your former leader,” Fenris went on. “Look at him. Even if I were to release him from his bounds, he will not be able to save the least of you from your troubles and misery. I will show you!”

  He released Bodolf from his bounds while the four flunkies formed a circle around Fenris and Bodolf. Even in his weakness, he went at Fenris with all that he had inside of him, but even though he was the stronger of the two, Bodolf couldn’t defeat this new and upgraded Fenris.

  Hit after hit and kick after kick put Bodolf down, blood from his face appeared from the fresh wounds, but the crack and snap that sounded out amongst the people from just under his chest brought him down to the ground.

  “Is this the kind of leader that you want? Is this who you want to follow?” Fenris yelled to the crowd of people. They cried out in total sympathy when they saw Bodolf held with a griping choke hold around his neck.

  “Please don’t kill me, please spare my life and I will oblige you,” he whispered, which was loud enough for Fenris to hear.

  “I told you that Bodolf is nothing more than a weak and unfit man. Tell my people what you told me!”

  On bended knees before his king, bloody and probably close to death, Bodolf repeated the words that came out of his mouth when he was held in a choke hold. “Now then, the king you praised and believed in bows at my feet. He worships me and the very ground I walk on,” Fenris yelled.

  “Get him out of here, bound him first and throw him into confinement,” Fenris ordered as another closed fist met that part of Bodolf’s face between the lower jaw and cheek bones. The cracking in that part of his face was so hard and brutal, he passed out.

  “No longer will we be here, no longer will we be obscured, living like the deprived people that Bodolf wanted us to be. By day’s end and before the sun is up, we will go and we will take over and we will have our new land, Canine-land!”

  “So, bird, what was it that you were trying to do by coming and invading my land?” Gilma ignored Norvis’s question. Although she knew she was held in a bird cage with a security lock on it, Gilma was either optimistic or dumb. With her feet, she pulled on the bar of the cage as if they were going to budge and open.

  Norvis didn’t move when he saw her doing this at least three or four times since she had been caged. This time when the jolting bolt of electricity rocked Gilma to the other side of the cage, he spoke out. “It will be easier on you to tell me what you were doing here in the caves rather than getting blasted with the electricity.”

  “You have no right to hold me here,” Gilma replied, white smoke ascending from her body.

  “And you have no right to be snooping into my caves as if you are trying to harm my people. I’ve asked you one time, what are you doing here? And I’m not going to ask you too many more times,” Norvis said. He walked closer to the cage, inches away from touching its bars, displaying some crooked smile which revealed sharp and jagged teeth.

  Of course, being a bird and a bird that by nature could possibly be a bird of prey, she had seen all kinds of teeth, but these teeth scared her. So, giving into her fear, allowing it to have the final say after several days of starvation, Gilma came to grips with her situation.

  “I have two friends that came here. They came here to see the lights. They saw a glimpse of the lights from their home. I elected to bring them both out here with the expectation of only them seeing the lights and taking them back to their home. But when I saw that you are the troll people who blocked off the entrance to your domain, I figured that you were going to do something to them.” She was close to Norvis and, through the bars; she gave him a hard stare.

  “Apparently you have no idea what this place is and for good reason. You are nothing more than a bird, a bird that, because she stuck her beak where it didn’t belong, is now one of my prisoners!”

  “So, I was supposed to leave them?” Gilma said. “They are my friends, and even though the one – Ento – at times could do without me,
it’s the dog-girl who has a mother and a father who cares a lot about her. I wanted to get her back home before the first light but from the conditions you have me in I guess I missed that flight!”

  Norvis rubbed his bearded face and said, “Well it wasn’t my fault that the dog-girl wanted more than to see lights as you say. You see, I own the rights to wishes. This was her first wish and I granted it to her. It seems to me if the dog-girl was as interested in you as you are so interested in her, she would not find a need to escape her home, bird. Have you thought about that?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “She is gone, out of here, no longer in this world. So I suggest that you stop worrying about the dog-girl. She has moved to another dimension in time.”

  Gilma thought about Norvis’s words, words that bit her like his vicious, sharp teeth. Move to another dimension in time. “If they have moved as you say to “another dimension in time” and I proved that my intention wasn’t to harm you or your people, but only to check on my friends, why hold me here as if I deserved this. My punishment should not be here but in Canine-land for bringing the dog-girl here without her parents knowing. Free me so I can tell Whisk-pey’s parents what I have done.” Gilma’s eyes filled very quickly with tears. They would spill out when she turned away from Norvis.

  Norvis didn’t walk away as Gilma thought he would. Instead a gleeful grin showed within his rugged face and dried brick-like lips. “You’re right. You must deal with the dog-girl’s parents. And it is against troll law to hold someone hostage without evidence of a crime. As I see it you have committed no crime against me or my people!”

  Gilma turned back to Norvis now. As far as her tearful eyes could see, there were a slew of trolls who stood in unison with Norvis. “Free this bird who goes by the name of…” Norvis paused, waiting for an answer.

  “Gilma, my name is Gilma!” Olen heard in his head, now we must get her out of here. I don’t feel comfortable here. But what came out of his mouth was nothing like the words that spoke out loud in his head. “Where are the two of you from? If you don’t mind me asking.”

  “This is unbelievable. The fairies healed Whisk-pey and for some reason I thought they were bad,” Ento said. “But why isn’t she awake?”

  “Maybe it takes a few minutes for the healing to take place in her body but she is definitely alive,” Olen said, hunkering down on his knees, watching Wisk-pey as her chest heaved in and out steadily. “Now since I know that Whisk-pey is alive, I feel a lot better.” He walked several inches away from her and exhaled a breath of relief.

  “I asked where the two of you are from, if that is not asking too much!”

  “I don’t think asking the same question twice is asking too much, especially when I, Ento, didn’t answer it the first time! I don’t know where I am, what you all call yourselves, but I think Land of Make Believe is far from here, and that is where we came from. Whisk-pey is called a Canine-person and me I am just Ento there isn’t a name for me,” Ento whispered. He sounded sad, his lips turned downward in an unhappy expression.

  “If you asked me if I liked the name Ento, I’d say yes,” Olen said with a wide smile. “It’s different, not like any other name that I heard in my life, if I had a name like yours, I would not care if I didn’t have a second name. Hey you, Ento, and Ento rocks!”

  Now Ento’s down-trodden frown turned to a grin. Olen could see his small triangle teeth through his purple lips. They looked creepy and almost scary to him, and as small as Ento was, he was sure those spike-like teeth could do a lot of damage if they were put to the test. Olen already decided that he didn’t want to put those choppers to the test.

  “Land of Make Believe? Why is it called Land of Make Believe?” Olen asked.

  “I don’t know, I just live there. Well, I did live there until….” Ento hesitated and turned his head toward Whisk-pey. “She’s waking up; Whisk-pey is waking up!” She moaned. Her eyes opened slowly. She pulled on her tight shirt that was now drenched with sweat.

  You know what happened last time when you first encountered the… I mean the girl don’t you?

  It’s you again, Olen replied to his double.

  Don’t you get testy with me, Olen, or push me away. If it wasn’t for me, that girl would still be in that bear trap out there, fighting for her little canine life, okay? So let’s just get that straight, all I am saying is be careful, that’s all!

  Thanks for caring, and I will, Olen thought.

  He backed away. Ento stood on his hind legs, anticipating when she would recover, so he could leap onto Whisk-pey. Olen, heeding what his double said, found his own legs and got to his feet.

  He backed away slowly until he suddenly hurried to Whisk-pey when she stumbled to get to her feet. He helped her the rest of the way. It still amazed him how much Whisk-pey looked like a human girl.

  When she stood and she was able to focus as best she could, she saw Olen and she pushed out of his grip. As light and clumsy as Olen was, he did all he could do to stand but the push was as hard as the quivering scowl that shaped itself within Whisk-pey’s face.

  “He…, he…, he is bad, Ento. He is trying to hurt me. He put that trap out there and he is trying to hurt me,” Whisk-pey uttered in a gasping whisper.

  “No, it wasn’t me,” Olen argued vehemently. “Remember, I saved you. I got you out of the trap, remember?”

  As if Ento was trying to figure out which one he would side with, he stood no taller than two feet, turning his head back and forth from Whisk-pey to Olen.

  “All I remember is my leg and what that trapped done to my leg!” She was reaching for her satchel. When she placed her weak hand in it, it was evident what she was reaching for.

  Ento, who had seen and heard enough, jumped in-between Whisk-pey and Olen. “No, enough the both of you! I am not sure where we are, Whisk-pey, but it is a strange and bizarre place. And I think we need to try and make as many friends here as possible!”

  They were now in the kitchen of the old house. Whisk-pey was breathing heavily. She was still suffering from the effects of the damage that the trap did to her leg. She held up herself by holding on to the kitchen sink.

  “I believe that Olen here is our friend,” Ento told her. “The fairies healed you and Olen brought you in here to rest. You were unconscious and you looked like you were dying!”

  Whisk-pey looked at the both of them separately then looked at her leg which showed no evidence that it had been ever hurt or even touched. Her hands shaking, she touched where the bear trap had clamped her leg.

  “I don’t feel anything, I…, I feel okay!” Her words came out in a mere hesitant whisper.

  “Yes, you are okay. The fairies saved you as Ento said,” Olen said. “It was nice meeting you, Ento and Whisk-pey. I don’t want to bother you anymore since I believe I have been a problem. I will be going and I am glad you are okay now, Whisk-pey!”

  Ento watched as Olen left the kitchen and walked to the front door, which was already open. He turned to Whisk-pey. He saw in her eyes that she had regained her strength. She too saw Olen go out the front door and step onto the porch.

  You’ve done the right thing, Olen. They are crazy the both of those creatures. “Come on, do you have to start right now? Can’t you see I have had a rough time? Geez!” Olen said to the voice in his head.

  I know you had a rough day and what makes you think my day has gone any better? You cast me aside and even jailed me, preventing me from telling you what I believe would help you!

  “Okay, I may have made a mistake by jailing you but I promise if I do it again, it won’t be a mistake nor will it be a misunderstanding. You will understand clearly why I’ve done it. Now either you can speak on something not related to this or not speak at all. Your choice!”

  There was quietness as Olen figured that his double decided against debating with him on the subject at that moment, since he could obviously feel and hear it in Olen’s voice that the mood to go back and forth wasn�
�t something Olen was up for. He would be jailed for sure if he tried it.

  Olen picked up his bike, but then he heard a yell in his head. He thought it was his double attempting to pull the last plug of mocker on him when his double said: “Don’t look behind you. Run back in the house!” Olen didn’t find the time or the strength to respond. Instead he got on his bike and attempted to start on his ride home, but when he turned around he saw two men; both, bearded and built like gorillas. “Good looking bike you got there kid. I wouldn’t mind having that myself!” the man with the brown beard said.

  “He’s just a kid, Monty, and what we are looking for isn’t in this bike, it’s in the air conditioning unit,” Yellow beard replied. “Yeah, but since he is here and just like every kid his age – a tell-tale – we take him inside until our job is done!”

  “Then when our job is done?” Brown beard’s reply was in the form of a question.

  “No, please! Whatever you are planning to do to me, don’t, please. I am very sick and it would not be any good for you, it will be very bad actually,” Olen said as he tried to balance himself on his bicycle. But he fell down with the bike in the grass. Yellow beard grabbed the bike with one hand and reached for Olen with his other hand. Olen adjusted his glasses then tried to make a run for it but was stopped when Brown beard grabbed the hem of his shirt. He almost slipped away but was caught before he could get to his feet.

  “No you’re not, you little runt, you coming with me!” Brown beard yelled and held Olen in his arms as if he was carrying a stack of two by fours.

  “Come on, you have to let me go. It’s dinner time and my mom and dad are expecting me home. I can’t miss dinner. They will come looking for me!”

  “Yeah, right, and the moon is going to fall from heaven. Shut up, we’re taking you in, boy!”