Gazing across the land again, she cuddled into her own embrace with a soft sigh of content.
He wandered out to join her, and was carefully contemplating his choice of words, wondering what he could possibly use as a subject which, preferably, had an essence of romance about it. That’s right, romance. Because it was always at the forefront of his mind, he ended up using the moon as his ideal bait.
“My,” he uttered in a wobbly way, trying to keep his cool while pretending to consider the moon, “doesn’t the moon look nice tonight?”
But Wren wasn’t fooled for a second, for as soon as those rather forced words of attempted courtship departed his quaking gullet, she knew only too well what he was up to.
Smiling quietly to herself, she replied, “I can’t see it, William. Not with the storm brewing. Perhaps you haven’t noticed?”
Swing and a miss, and William’s blank stare was locked unnervingly at the sky as he pondered his way out of this muck-up. Wren was otherwise biting her lip in an attempt to restrain a giggle. You thick eejit ya! he deliberated, because he knew perfectly well that the moon would not be visible during the tempest, as Percy had already told them so upon their arrival. This put him off to a terrible start altogether. Whatever fearlessness he may have had two minutes ago was slowly recoiling to the self-counsel of, “William, what the hell did you just get yourself into? Get out while you still can, will you!” But, devastated as he was underneath, he needed to maintain his outer calmness as best he could, and carry on. It was either that or sprint off; most likely face flat into a wall.
Whilst he was reflecting upon her last answer (evidently with grave distress, might I add), Wren was secretly observing him. She could tell that he was trying his utmost to impress her. But she could also see, beneath his inept guise of waning composure, that his mind was struggling wildly in the process. He even looked to be sweating a little. Even so, she couldn’t resist seeing him squirm, thus she allowed him to proceed of his own accord.
Wiping a bead of cold sweat from his nose, William blathered, “Yes! Yes that’s true! You can’t see it…can you? Hmmm. Not really, like…through the clouds and that…and the rain. What an eejit, me! But the stars are nice, though. Don’t you think the stars look nice?” asked he, with all the smoothness of cutlery being scratched across porcelain plates.
Wren was trying so hard not to chuckle. Because if they couldn’t see the moon, then how could they see the stars? Realising the idiocy of his statement for himself, William hastily incorporated a spiel of badly fabricated, poetic blathering so as to style up his error.
“They are like other worlds, really…the stars…um, when you can see them, I mean. Like planets from afar. Lands that nobody has ever explored. Realms that are full o’ magical s-stuff. Kingdoms that are crammed with…with…with enchantment! Sparkly things which—”
But before he could embarrass himself further, Wren put her hands up with a splutter of laughter, and said, “Okay…stop!”
Meanwhile, poor William was left standing there, blinking like an idiot, not knowing what was going on or what he was even saying.
“You read too many storybooks, William,” she sighed with a smug, yet irrefutably flawless smile. “But maybe when William wishes to talk to me…then I might listen.”
Pinching his cheek, with a look of adoring sympathy, she withdrew for a glass of cherry wine, leaving him standing there, alone, with a look of utter witlessness on his face. And once she’d vanished from his sight, he clutched onto the railing, gazed over the blinking countryside and let out a growling sigh, “Percy…you aul’ Wally,” he said to himself, like it was all Percy’s doing.
He waited on the veranda for some time before eventually bracing enough nerve to go back inside. It’s also safe to say that he was back to square one with the entire ‘Wren’ situation, as he’d now been bitten by female rejection for the very first time in his life and it left him puzzled, embarrassed, and feeling altogether like a proper fool; which is quite understandable, when you consider the hames he’d made of it.
You see, as you’re already aware, he’d always tried to appear unenthusiastic about Wren’s company within the group, as some absurd means of trying to get her attention. Albeit, there were times when he truly was curious of her intentions. Nevertheless, in order for this plan to work, he had to make this unwillingness obvious—just as the men used to do in the pub back home—otherwise it would have defeated the entire purpose, he thought. Only now the tables had completely turned in Wren’s favour, which fell quite ill upon the boy, solely because his true feelings were fairly clear to her, consequently vanquishing any callous (though preferably impressionable) conduct he may have used against her in the past. So for the remainder of that evening, he was sure to keep his distance from her, heedless of whatever pleasant gestures she might have motioned at him in the meantime. A wave. A smile. What if he misinterpreted them too? Alas, he decided it best to disregard them completely in order to regain some dignity. And yet, the words, “When William wishes to say something to me, then I might listen,” also had him pondering, but they didn’t bare a sturdy enough foundation for them to have ‘the cosy future’ he’d always hoped for.
The following morn, and the final day of the tempest, the tree suffered a massive upheaval. William was rudely awoken when Thérn slipped from its hook and bumped him on the forehead. The walls were moving. In effect, the whole tree was moving. It contorted, and twisted, and squirmed as if reacting to some impalpable menace.
Rippling and quivering, the wood shrank in and expanded out, snaking left to right with great, booming groans. Grabbing his belongings, William sprang from his bed and made for the hallway, where he found the others toppling about in the chaos. As if poor Icrick wasn’t bad enough, nursing an unmerciful hangover, this was only making it worse for him. Pink and inflamed, his eyes had sunk back into his skull as his jaws watered to the threat of even more vomiting. To and fro he staggered, ceaselessly trying to lean against the wall where he might find some sort of comfort. But the motions of the tree were far too distressing, and the sickly Grogoch was getting flung all over the place, with his cheeks ever bloating to an ailing green.
“What’s going on?!” William shouted.
Percy came plodding up the hallway with a big smile on his face, calm and as fresh as a daisy, and waving them along, he said, “Come on! Follow me! You have to see this!”
No sooner had Percy shown up, than the tree suddenly stopped its shifting and died into steadiness once more. It was as if nothing had ever happened. Not a splinter of wood was out of place, and Percy just stood there with his hands behind his back, grinning at them like he hardly noticed a thing.
“What was all that in aid of?” asked Crosco, with Ifcus’ quivering eyes peeking over The Body’s iron shoulders. “Talk about turning a pleasant dream into a raving nightmare! What in blazes was happening? An earthquake? Another mountain? A herd of cows? What?”
“A herd of Cows?” Khrum asked, with a puzzled look, and Crosco responded with a shrug.
“Ho-ho! Not at all!” laughed Percy. “‘Twas the tree taking its defence! Anyhow, ‘tis late afternoon, me dear chappies. ‘Bout time ye got your backsides out of your cots. Now, follow me, quickly, before it’s too late. You really must feast your eyes on this!”
He was so full of excitement that it intrigued them no end. With the ruckus now over, and peace inhabiting the oak once again, they followed him down a thin corkscrew slide, over a precarious drop into blackness by way of a scraggy beam bridge, and finally up a sharp slope until they arrived at a bare chamber with just a triangular fireplace, a single stool, and a high arched window in the exact middle. These were Percy’s sentry quarters.
Waddling over to the window with eager hands, he said, “Quickly now. Quickly!”
Fixing on a pair of his thick glasses, he gawked at them with magnified eyes, and with his finger to his mouth, he said, “Shhh! Their ears are keen. We must not draw their attention.”
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“Who’s they?” William asked, approaching the window.
Outside he noticed how the tree had lowered its branches to take shape of that hill which Percy had told them about before. Because they were so close to it, they could distinguish the leaves from plain grass fairly easily. However, had they examined that altered oak from any further away, it might’ve been a different kettle of fish altogether, because the leaves were sloped steeply down the sides, revealing not so much as a windowpane or a sliver of bark along the way. They then blended themselves flawlessly into the grass below, as to give the impression of one colossal, karstic mound. A most extraordinary spectacle. Even the tiniest buds had congregated to look like tiny woodlands.
But they weren’t there to observe the tree itself. They were there to see what it was hiding from.
A blanket of fog had cloaked the entirety of Lythiann, and was creeping closer to the tree with each closing minute. The land appeared haunted by the lack of light, and this heavy layer of murky miasma was devouring everything in its road.
“Is this what I think it is?” Wren asked.
“Indeed!” said Percy, with a childish chuckle.
“And what is it?” asked William, again feeling bothered about being kept in the dark.
Suddenly, Khrum pointed into the fog and gasped, “Look! Dear Lord, would ya feasht your blinkers on that!”
Within the bank of fog, strolling across the land like lonely phantoms of the earth, was a gathering of ogres. Gigantic, skeletal beings, with broad backs and gaunt features. Sorrowfully they lumbered through the mist, spread out with great distances between them. There were so many. All of whom muttered to themselves in a quiet, inconsolable chant.
“Marvellous!” whispered Percy, almost with a tear in his eye.
“What is this?” the lad asked.
“It’s what we call a Nhùnacladth…or an ogre’s funeral,” answered Percy. “Another filthy ogre is dead in the world, and what a wonderful day it is because of it. Slain in battle, I’d say.”
“What? You mean…they’re mourning its death?” asked the boy.
“Yes!” chortled the old man. “They grieve while the rest of us rejoice. Grimy, rotten animals they are! Death is too good for them.”
Motioning towards the east, Wren added, “If you look up ahead there, William, you should be able to see them carrying the body. Look, there they are now.”
Peering east, only to see the vague image of a casket upon the shoulders of four ogres, William asked, “Well, where are they taking him?”
“To the coast, I would expect,” answered The Head. “Ogres came onto this land from the sea, don’t you know. So when death finally catches up with one of them, its body is then returned to the tides by their brethren. Not quite a customary burial…but then again, they are ogres! Probably been travelling for days, they have. A waste of good energy, if you ask me.”
Surprised by their delight in such a woeful phenomenon, William silenced his opinions and continued to watch those beasts as they unsuspectingly strode past that majestic, oaken knoll.
For some time they sat at the window, observing those ogres as they wandered eastward. The others soon grew weary and went back to their holes so as to ready their belongings for their outset the following morn, but the boy stayed where he was.
He sat there until the entire legion of mourners had moved on. It took the better part of two hours, but eventually they departed from sight, together with that mysterious fog, like it was somehow enshrouding them from outer judgment and hostility, allowing them to peacefully bury their kin without the hindrances of peril or intrusion.
As he watched them diminishing into the east, only one thought echoed inside him; the very notion that these creatures were, one day soon, to be his enemies, had they known it yet or not. But, their differences aside, William couldn’t refute a magnificence behind these creatures, for they were not without a sense of sentiment; mourning the loss of one who had obviously once placed love in their hearts. “Animals,” Percy said. How could those who displayed such devotion be considered so? They respected their dead. Not like when human casualties of wars, in worlds over, were abandoned by their own and left to rot in the very soil that had been soaked red through a sacrifice which the victims themselves believed just. Forsaken by the very people whom they fought to protect, and then granted no reverence in return. Could it be helped that these animals were influenced by such a powerful conjurer as Briggun? Was it truly their fault? Or was William truly that ignorant about the ways of this enchanted world?
After they’d thanked the old man, before departing the following morn, Percy pulled William aside and told him that he had left a gift in his comfort cloak. ‘Something which may prove useful during times of pursuing peril’ was how he phrased it. Presuming it rude to ask what it might be there and then, William simply thanked Percy many times over before finally leaving the oak palace for good. However, when he made search for this supposed gift later that day, he found nothing. That old man was a bit funny anyways, thought the lad, smiling. But odd or not, they rather enjoyed their visit to Percy’s magical home, and they found Percy himself to be a most delightful host indeed.
And so it was they were, again, back on their wearing path. But their stomachs were fulfilled, and they were well rested, so all was not entirely grim. Jimzin had also returned in the meantime, which Wren was extremely thankful for, on account of her being so unaccustomed to all of this traipsing about by foot. By the looks of things, he’d been sheltering from the tempest in a nearby bayou, because his odour was foul and his claws were encased in clumps of parched mud. After finding a calm pond along the way, he welcomed the opportunity to clean himself off. Obviously the reek was not only bothering the others but was bothering him, too. When he was through grooming himself, they marched along the rock-strewn causeway of Nigh Muphèt’s fen until the sun passed down over the countryside, lengthening the shadows before their stride.
As the wispy streaks of sunset broke behind eventide, and a biting frost crept eerily over the hills of Almas Aér, they discovered a monumental lodge, such as what a beaver might build. But this was well beyond any average proportions, and was cleverly hidden beneath the steep overhang of an ample tarn. It looked rather dilapidated, and also vacant; a choice place to rest on account of apt shelter being otherwise scarce and, all the more so, since the mighty Jimzin had already decided to rest beneath a stooping beech not far from the reedy bank.
But their comforts soon crumbled when they were chased from their beds during the early hours by the two feral Creavers who were, in fact, inhabiting the lower passages of that very lodge.
Big as wild boars, and descendants of the Beaver family, the Creavers were brutal animals with panned, hobnailed tails that slapped at their heels like hammering maces.
The bigger of the Creavers—and undoubtedly the male—came charging at them with a chilling snarl, which threatened, “Go on! Get out o’ me bloomin’ ‘ouse or I’ll ‘av ya! Go find someplace else ta squat…blasted faerie-folk.”
Slipping and stumbling, while struggling to collect their possessions, our heroes barely escaped that wrathful beast with their limbs intact. Had they not been in the wrong, they might’ve reacted a little more vindictively. But, in this particular case, they were the intruders, and they were really extremely lucky to have evaded that petulant Creaver so easily. For not often are those beasts so effortlessly eluded, thanks to their sharp senses and lightning reflexes.
Although blessed in their escape, they were left to endure the stabbing coldness of that frigid night, with nothing to do other than hike till first light, where, perhaps, they might eventually find some adequate shelter in which they could catch a little well-earned sleep.
It wasn’t long after sunrise when Wren spied an alcove in amongst the erupting geysers and the enchanting thermal streams of the Omora Tors, where they then slept for most of the morn, with the searing steam providing better heat than any coverlet of theirs.
Quite a prosperous find, given everything they’d been through that dreadful night. And when they roused to face a sunny afternoon, they each indulged in a scrumptious lunch before setting out on their road again.
Moons loomed and dwindled, as dawns painted the skies into dusks, and three nights had passed since departing Percy’s abode. Upon the fourth day, twilight was falling when they happened upon a fine, sheltering sycamore on the lower western bank of a mountainside, and beside it trickled a gentle creek. With weariness in their bones after a long day of hiking, they rested in that spot until dawn came to wake them. And it awoke them to an encounter of—how should we say—a reasonably modest disposition at that.
- Chapter Two -
Ewval’s Bastion
The sun glared radiantly upon William’s dreaming eyes, when a jovial voice suddenly said, “William. William, it’s time to get up now, I should think. It is a lovely, lovely morning. Rise and shine now.”
With a nudge to his shoulder, William rolled over with sleep in his eyes, to find Icrick’s funny face smiling over him. For a weary instant, he thought his whole adventure, up until then, was just one long, ridiculous dream. But he wasn’t so fortunate, for every little incident, including that cringing disaster of failed courtship, couldn’t have been more real. Actually, that was probably one of the most nightmarish portions of recent days for the boy, although it didn’t seem to burden Wren at all, with her being as blithe as usual. Never did she fail to keep an untroubled smile upon her lips.
Khrum also woke to Icrick’s call, so he crawled out from beneath William’s backpack with a slothful wail and his hat down over his eyes.
“Ugh, do we have ta keep movin’?” he groaned, hardly able to move. “I’m absolutely shattered after sleepin’ on this rock-hard ground. Which, might I add, I fear I will never get used ta again. Look at it! Ya’d be as well off sleepin’ on a pile o’ swords! Shtones pokin’ out all over the place! Ta make matters worse, I was havin’ these weird nightmares. Peculiar bloody dreams where I was bein’ chashed downhill by a herd o’ wild beer barrels. Horrible it was. Barely got away with my life in the end.”
The Other of One: Book Two Page 6