Awfully Furmiliar

by Michael J Tresca

  "Great. So, I was wondering if maybe you could give us a key back?"

  "GIVE IT BACK? WHY WOULD I DO THAT?"

  "Because it's not yours?"

  "EVERYTHING IN THE WELL IS MINE, LITTLE ONE." The nostrils flared, spewing water onto the edges of the well. Where it hit, the stone faded to gold flakes.

  It occurred to me we were within reach of the troll. If it chose, it could snatch either one of us up.

  "Perhaps we could trade for it?"

  The great head sniffed in my direction. The huge eye that was focused on me opened and closed.

  "A TRADE. HMMM. PERHAPS."

  "What's it saying?" asked Lycus.

  I shushed him. I didn't want the troll to get distracted—or worse, hungry.

  "I WILL ALLOW YOU IN MY WELL ONCE, IN EXCHANGE FOR A HUMAN SACRIFICE."

  It leered at Lycus, who scrambled backwards in alarm.

  "But—"

  "THAT IS MY PRICE. DROP ONE INTO THE WELL AND YOU WILL HAVE YOUR CHANCE."

  The well-troll sunk back into the water, its lidless gaze fixed on Lycus as it submerged.

  "What?" asked Lycus, panting. "The look that thing gave me will haunt me to the end of my days."

  "You don't want to know," I said. "Summon the reeves. We'll need their help on this."

  * * *

  Lycus summoned the reeves from the three different villages. Boris was among them. By now, the appearance of a talking rat was taken as a matter of course. Nobody questioned it.

  "I have summoned you here because I face a challenge. We need to circumvent a problem with the castle."

  Boris stepped forward. "What kind of problem, m'lord?"

  I had to choose my words carefully. I feared that telling them about a well turning all things to gold might lead to a stampede. But then, these were the reeves—if I couldn't trust them, I couldn't trust anyone.

  "There is an obstacle here which demands my attention. It creates a barrier of a particular sort that is hindering me from returning to my original form."

  Boris cleared his throat. "Are you talking about the well-troll, m'lord?"

  I was speechless for a moment. "Yeah. That."

  The other two reeves nodded. "Oh yes, we've heard about it for years."

  "Do tell."

  "The well-troll was once our prince and Carabas was once a principality. Prince Gierig was very greedy. Over time, he became so greedy that he stopped leaving his castle and started hording his gold. The story goes that he flung his gold into an abandoned well. One day he stole from a great and powerful wizard named Halewijn. Halewijn cursed the prince and soon after, Prince Gierig threw everyone out of his castle for fear they would steal his gold. No one went near the castle after that. Not until the Margrave arrived."

  "Great," I sighed.

  "Well, you know all about him then. This well-troll's well covers everything it touches with gold."

  They nodded.

  "There is something at the bottom of the well that I need."

  "The well-troll will never let you have it," said one of the other reeves.

  "He asked for something in exchange," I said morosely.

  "Whatever he asks, it will be too steep a price to pay," said Boris.

  I nodded. "He demands a human sacrifice."

  The reeves muttered their sympathy. "Who will you choose?"

  "Wait a minute!" I said. "I'm not sacrificing anyone!"

  "The Margrave would sacrifice someone whenever he needed gold," said Boris. "It is tradition."

  "That's outrageous!" I shouted in spite of myself. Ura had conveniently left that unpleasant routine out of our conversations."I'm not sacrificing anyone!"

  "If it saves the village, we are not above sacrificing the elderly or the lame."

  "I am NOT sacrificing ANYONE." For some reason Boris' offer deeply offended me. "So we'll have to come up with another plan."

  Lycus, who stood in the back of the room, interjected. "You could always trick it."

  "How so?"

  "You could pretend to give it a sacrifice," said Lycus.

  "It would have to be someone very nimble," said Boris.

  "And very quick. Trolls can be fast when they're hungry."

  "I'll do it," said Lycus before I could respond. "I'm the fastest swimmer here."

  "Are you sure?" I looked at Lycus.

  The other reeves shuffled their feet. "I don’t know how to swim," admitted Boris. "None of us do."

  Lycus smiled triumphantly. "See?"

  "That still leaves the well itself," I said.

  "Whatever touches the water turns to gold," said Lycus. "I might be able to dive to the bottom fast enough, but I'd never get back up in time. And certainly not fast enough to avoid the well-troll."

  The reeves huddled. Boris snapped his fingers. "I’ve got it!" The other two reeves frowned at him. Boris nodded; they weren't all in agreement with whatever it was they were about to share. "Will o' wisp."

  "A what?"

  "A will o' wisp. There are some who haunt our lands. They can turn gold into anything. If you could convince one to come to the castle, it could turn you back once you escaped the well. And the troll."

  I held up one paw. "Do we even know where these will o' wisps are?"

  "In the most dangerous part of Carabas' swamp," said Boris.

  "It’s settled then," I said. "Now all we have to do is find a will o’ wisp, convince it to help us, get Lycus to dive to the bottom of the well, grab the key, hop back out of the well before he turns solid gold, and turn him back to flesh."

  "Without getting eaten by the troll," said Lycus with a smirk.

  "He’ll make a good sacrifice," whispered Boris to the other reeves.

  * * *

  The reeves weren’t kidding. Carabas abutted the Stagnum, a no-man’s land filled with all kinds of dangerous flora and fauna. It was also primarily responsible for why there was a castle and a holding at all and explained why it had been vacant until Ura arrived. On one hand, the Stagnum kept the lands to the west relatively free from invaders, but very few people wanted land abutting such a perilous territory. It did make for a good barrier, which meant the Margrave’ primary concerns were the bandits from the north and the Calximus Kingdom to the south. It was doubtful that even Calximus was all that interested in Carabas’ swampy terrain.

  We spent hours watching the Stagnum border when finally Boris arose with a shout. "There!" He pointed at a dancing light that bobbed to and fro. "That’s one of them."

  Before setting out on our journey we looked through Ura’s personal things to see if there were any magic items that would help. Amongst the items that appeared to have no practical use, we found the dragon bones.

  "How are you going to get there?" asked Lycus.

  "The same way Ura did. Lycus, point your hand out towards the lights." Lycus did as he was told. "Now, toss the dragon bones."

  Of course, I had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t understand Ura’s complex prognostications using the bones, but I had seen their effects. I just hoped that whatever magic worked for Ura would work for me. After all, I was the power source, right?

  The bones clattered to the ground. In the flickering torchlight, it was difficult to make them out.

  Lycus had his eyes closed. He opened one a crack. "Do you feel any different? I don’t feel any different."

  Boris frowned. "It didn’t work."

  But what they couldn’t see, what only I could detect with my rat senses (or maybe my magical ones—there was no way for me to distinguish), was a winding path leading from our location into the swamp. It zigzagged crazily across the unforgiving terrain.

  "It did work!" I exclaimed. "Follow me!"

  We set off into the muck. The trail illuminated enough for me to track it by scent alone—it smelled like glorious cheese. Truly, this was rat magic at its finest.

  Lycus carried me. He was armed with a knife. Boris carried a stout quarterstaff that was topped by a torch. Adding my rat puniness
into the equation and we were a fairly pathetic bunch, unlikely to intimidate a bandit much less dancing sentient flames.

  We had worked out a system for moving about; shouting directions grew tiresome, especially since I had to look back at Lycus every time to share a thought. So I sat on Lycus’ head and tugged on his hair in the direction I wanted him to go. This worked much better than it sounds. Before long we were closing in on the dancing will o’ wisps.

  "What do we do when we get there?" whispered Boris, his frightened features illuminated by our only torch. He kept staring over his shoulder, uncomfortable in the darkness. As a peasant, it was drilled into him to never leave the safety of his village at night, and yet here he was sticking his neck out for me.

  "I’m going to try to speak with them," I said. "Hopefully that will be enough."

  At last we reached a rushy spot in the swamp, where the two will o' wisps were frisking about.

  "Uh...hi," I beamed tentatively at one of them.

  The light stopped dancing. It whisked closer at frightening speed. Boris yelped and ducked down. The wisp flitted over to Boris’ torch. It looked like a flickering lamp: now red, now white, now yellow.

  "Hail good cousin!" came the mental response. I looked at Boris, who had abandoned his torch completely by sticking it into the muck. He couldn’t hear it. "We seem to be related, and yet one must wonder if we’re related at all! You are sitting very still and no wisp has ever sat still for very long!"

  As if to demonstrate how wisps don’t sit, it bounced around with a happy cadence, slowly making a circle around Boris’ torch.

  The wisp had confused the torch with another wisp! Clearly, wisps weren’t as bright as they seemed.

  "Actually, I’m not…" I paused. Did it really matter if the wisp knew who was speaking? "Cousin, I need your help. Do you have a name?"

  The wisp bobbed gaily. "Will, of course. But then you knew that, as all wisps are named Will. Ask Will and he shall endeavor to help!"

  "Will, is it true you can turn anything to gold and back again?"

  Will flickered blue and then green. "As well you know it, cousin. What kind of wisp are you?"

  I hedged. "A new one. If a man were covered in gold, would you be able to release him?"

  The wisp chortled in my mind. "If men were made of gold, I should feast for days!" Will darted towards Lycus, who flinched but held his ground. It zipped around him in a circle so quickly that the afterimage of Will’s passing burned in my retinas.

  Lycus’ pants fell to the ground.

  "I thought I told you not to bring any gold!" hissed Boris at Lycus.

  Lycus struggled to hold up his pants.

  "Delicious!" chortled Will. "I’m surprised you didn’t feast on that earlier, cousin. It wasn’t much, but it was quite good—gold I haven’t tasted in over a decade!"

  "There’s more gold than you can imagine back at my castle."

  "You have a castle?" Will flashed brightly. "Filled with gold?"

  "Just one room. And the gold’s at a bottom of a well…it’s complicated."

  "Lead the way!" Will bobbed happily around Boris’ torch.

  "It agreed to help," I told my companions. "But whatever you do, don’t let that torch go out."

  * * *

  Fortunately, the scent trail was still active enough that I could lead Lycus back to the castle. It was a nerve-wracking journey, lightened only by the fact that we could see a bit better with Will bobbing madly about his new friend: Boris’ torch.

  "You know the plan, right?" I asked as we approached the well.

  Lycus nodded. "Yep."

  "And you know what to do once you find the key?"

  "Yep," said Lycus again. He had two ropes, one tied to his waist and another loosely dangling from his belt. One was for Lycus, the other for the key, assuming he made it that far.

  "You seem awfully calm about this."

  Lycus smiled. "We didn’t think we could get the will o’ wisp and we found him, so I’d say things are looking up." Always the optimist.

  I kept my own fears to myself. Boris, on the other hand, was not nearly as tactful. "You’ll drown or the troll will eat you if you don’t turn to gold first."

  "Boris…"

  "Actually, you’ll probably drown, turn to gold, and THEN the troll will eat you."

  "Boris!" I mentally shouted. "That’s enough!"

  Boris sulked. "Just trying to prepare the sacrifice for what he’s getting into."

  "Wow, cousin, this place is neat!" shouted Will, bobbing madly with alternating blue and red flashes. "Is there gold here?"

  "Lots of it. And there’ll be some for you to eat in a moment, if you can hold on."

  Will became still, vibrating in the air. "I can hardly wait!"

  "Lycus, use the pole."

  With an affirming nod, Lycus grabbed one of the many troll-poking poles that we’d left just outside the well room and shoved it into the water.

  The response was instantaneous. The troll, all teeth and bulging eyes, splashed out of the water as if he had been launched. "IS MY SACRIFICE READY?"

  Lycus gasped and took an involuntary step backwards. Boris, who wasn’t willing to enter the room in the first place, cowered by the doorway. Will didn’t seem to notice.

  "We have a will o’ wisp with us, troll," I said with as much confidence as I could muster. "And they eat gold. So you’ll have to come up with something else if you want to threaten us."

  The troll’s eyes narrowed to slits. "THEN YOU WILL NOT GET THE KEY."

  I tried a mental shrug, which didn’t amount to much in rat form. "There will be other keys. Lycus here is an expert thief, I’m sure he can get around it. Enough of your empty threats, we know you can’t move beyond your well…"

  "OH CAN’T I?" and with that the troll took one sloshing step forward, a huge clawed foot materializing from the water as the troll clambered over the lip of the well.

  "Lycus, now!"

  Lycus didn’t even look back at me for confirmation. Taking a deep breath, he dove straight into the center of the well, one rope loosely tied around his leg.

  The troll’s huge head swung to track Lycus' movement. "WHAT?" He expected people to run away from him, not towards him. A second later and the troll’s form collapsed into water as he turned and dove after his prey.

  Running over to the side of the well, I caught a glimpse of Lycus frog-swimming his way to the bottom, darting in bursts a few feet forward each time. The water was extraordinarily clear for a well; presumably the troll kept it clean to lure fools who could make out the glittering pile of gold at the bottom.

  Lycus suddenly struggled. In the water, the troll was invisible. It was impossible to tell if Lycus had run out of air, had hit his head on a rock, or if the troll was chomping on his leg.

  The rope, held by Boris in the other room, was suddenly yanked hard. I caught a glimpse of Lycus sifting through the pile of treasure at the bottom; he was fast becoming indistinguishable from the treasure itself as his skin turned gold.

  Boris was right—the troll would have a Lycus-shaped gold statue to add to his collection if Lycus didn’t get eaten or drown first.

  And then suddenly the rope went limp. There was a loud slurping sound from the well.

  "PULL!" I shouted at Boris.

  Boris yanked the rope hard. So hard, in fact, that the key that Lycus tied to the other end of the rope hurdled through the air. The knot Lycus had tied wasn’t very strong; he simply didn’t have enough time. I just hoped that my plan worked and he survived the ordeal.

  The key skittered into the adjacent room. Boris slammed the door shut just after the will o’ wisp flew through the doorway.

  "Gold!" shouted Will. He zipped towards the key.

  "No, wait, there’s more gold—" but I had underestimated will o’ wisp zeal. It engulfed the key.

  The key was illuminated as a shadow within Will. The gold melted off it and then the key fell to the ground, steaming.

  "
That wasn’t very much," said a disappointed Will.

  "Boris, open the door. Let’s have a look."

  Boris grumbled but opened the door. I slowly crept up to the well and peered over the edge.

  Sure enough, before tying it to the rope, Lycus had used the key to open a pocket dimension. He’d opened it some feet above the bottom of the well. Everything that was near him went into the portal, like water down a drain. In fact, some of the well water had gone into the portal as well.

  Of course, there was no sign of the troll.

  "Boris, lower me down and I’ll turn the key."

  With more grumbling, Boris lowered me down.

  "YIPPEE!" shouted Will as he blasted past me into the well. The amount of gold down there would keep him busy for a while.

  I made it to the surface of the water. That was where Lycus had disappeared—everything below him was still there, everything above him had been sucked down into the portal. If the troll was around, he wasn’t making himself known.

  I turned the key.

  There was a loud pop. I peered into the hole.

  Sure enough, there was water in the hole. And a gold-covered statue of Lycus. He was looking over his shoulder with an expression of horror, cheeks bulging from holding his breath, hair wafting upwards.

  "There!" I broadcast to Will. "A gold-covered statue!"

  Will, who had the attention span of a flea, let out a mental shout of joy and converged on the gold-covered statue of Lycus. A dizzying blur of red and blue fire zipped around the statue and a moment later Lycus was gasping for air.

  "Gah!" shouted Lycus. He clambered out of the hole, soaking wet.

  I immediately turned the key. Didn’t want the troll coming back with him.

  "You did it, Lycus!"

  Lycus took a few more gasps of air. "Troll?"

  "Still in the hole, far as I know." My little rat paws clutched the key. "Yell for Boris to pull you up please, I can’t see him so I can’t talk to him."

  "Boris, pull me up!"

  Boris’ head peeked over the well. "You’re alive!"

  We clambered up out of the well and out of the room. Will followed us, humming a happy little tune, bouncing back and forth. He was presumably having a conversation with Boris’ torch.

  Lycus wrung out his shirt, creating a huge puddle of water on the floor.