However drastic this situation was, particularly for him, the man remained strong, and so answered, “He’s gone, lad.”
Hearing those words aloud opened their eyes to the wretched truth. He was dead. Wren wept first, but certainly was not the last.
Khrum stood by Redmun. He was gazing ponderously at his beloved friend Pew; at how peaceful he looked as he lay there. He had his hat in his hands. He couldn’t stand it, for the tears he could not beckon. At the same time, he muttered to himself, oddly. Muttering in a way of indecisiveness. He kept trying to catch William’s eye, as if he wanted to tell him something. To speak out. But some inner conflict clearly told him not to, so he let it be. It can neither be judged, however, those strange and unnatural mannerisms of the recently bereaved.
William and Stell were so dismayed by Pew’s passing, that, for the pain which they suffered, they may as well have had their hearts torn out by hand and skewered onto a blazing spit before their waking eyes. That would have been a lot less painful.
Then there was the Grogoch, who refused to accept any of this.
“Well, can’t we do something?!” he demanded, but everyone was too troubled to answer.
In a voice seeping with denial, he continued, “Of course we can! We always pull through, don’t we? We always end up landing on our feet somehow. So why should this be any different? Of course we can help him! He’s our Pew. “
Looking to the Erethaoí for help, and trying to appear stable, he pleaded, “Redmun. You know magic. Potions. Can’t you do something? An incantation, maybe? A spell, perhaps? Can’t you heal him?!”
Even as he pleaded, he could see the sympathy on Redmun’s face. He didn’t have to say a word for Icrick to understand. So, instead, the Grogoch ran to the Elf.
“What about you, Stell?” he begged, with a trembling throat. “You know of special plants that can do amazing things. Is there anything you can do? An elixir? A tonic?”
Stell was afraid of answering, for fear of landing further burden upon the Grogoch’s already aching heart. That’s when Icrick spotted a weed nearby. A useless old stalk of Ragwort, sprouting up from a crack in the ground.
In his desperation, he snapped it up and beseeched to the Elf, “Here! Look! This will do. Won’t it? Come now. You take this and I shall get some water boiling. Then before we know it, Pew shall be as strong as an ox again. Here! Take it!”
Wordlessly, Stell was forced to decline. His lip trembled; his eyes, glinting.
“Take it I said!” Icrick yelled in a rage, but he couldn’t change Stell’s mind.
Icrick, in his disbelief and shame, staggered away from them. He couldn’t bear to think that they actually had no will to save their friend. To not even try. And yet, in reality, it was he who couldn’t face the truth. The truth that Pew was no more.
“Bah, curse you people! Call yourselves friends? If ye won’t do something, then I will!” he snarled, angrily.
As if to imply that he had no right cradling him in the first place, he shoved Redmun back and whisked the Poppum’s body from his grasp. Resting Pew on the ground, he then plucked out the barb, placed his lips on the wound, and tried sucking out the poison.
“It is useless,” the man whispered, to be ignored.
Standing by Icrick’s side, he gently repeated, “It is no use, my friend. The poison, it travels too quickly. Even if we had drawn it out immediately, it still would’ve made no difference. One Goblin barb holds enough toxin to eradicate two grown men. This small creature never stood a chance.”
In then educing this one Poppum’s impact during his time spent on their expedition, he declared with such pride, “But come what may, he shall always be remembered a hero. For it was a very brave, very selfless thing he did here today. Risking his life for the greater good. Known warriors have been deemed worthy of far greater praises for less. Alas, Pew did not depart in vain…and our love for him reigns eternal.”
Only then did Icrick open his own eyes to the truth, which sunk in deeper than the Goblin’s own poison. And when it did, he broke breathlessly into tears, holding Pew’s face so close as to never let him go.
But there was truth in what the Erethaoí had said about Pew. And while they were suffering, it helped them to understand. Through each of them sorrow’s ghost so stole, absolving their hearts of its void, to supplant it with a delicate touch of remembrance, of treasured adoration, the likes of which would keep that precious little creature alive inside of them from that moment to the very ends of time.
Alas, with the Poppum being Redmun’s companion to begin with, Icrick felt it only just to hand him back to his rightful master. But not before wrapping him up warmly in his picnic blanket.
As he handed him over, he had to ask, “So, what now? Regarding arrangements, I mean? He deserves a proper burial. Somewhere nice.”
“Before the Pooka’s lair, there is a secret pool; hidden and sheltered,” the Erethaoí answered. “There, I will cleanse the body. I shall nonetheless wait until I return to Lán Chúrdal before I bury him…as I will not do so here. Not where the rains and earth are tarnished by Drevol’s dead. At home there is a green upon the borders of a pine wood, hidden away, just shy of a friendly falls. Come dusk, there is a wondrous view of the sunset from there, and that’s when the butterflies flourish. I think Pew would cherish it there, as his final resting place.”
So exhausted from his upset, the Grogoch smiled. “It sounds perfect, Redmun. Just what he’d like. Bless you, you are truly a good friend…and I’m sorry for acting the way I did. It wasn’t right to say what I said.”
The man nodded. He understood only too well why the Grogoch was so angry and upset. He was too, yet nothing could be done to change Pew’s fate.
Placing the bundle over one shoulder, he led Icrick down along that long, fire-lit way.
Last to head out was Stell, who was delaying on the brink, peering down into the carnage and butchery which had transpired by his own hand.
Goblins? He feared them no more. Rather, his trepidation was replaced by a stronger longing for revenge. A lust to strike down the one villain who mattered to him. And that day would eventually come, someday, and Stell the Mighty would be waiting for him; waiting to rid Lythiann of this animal whose dawning led to the destruction of so many innocent lives. Two of whom were very close to him.
He was about to depart, when he stopped. Something had just budged over his shoulder. It tapped and grated, as of rocks suddenly disturbed. Those catacombs were falling apart anyhow after the action of late, so he put it down to that and strode on.
Alas, perhaps he should have trusted his instincts. For something was prowling those shadows. A watcher, who’d been stalking them ever since the Ice Pixies.
- Chapter Sixteen -
A Shadow Trails
Daydreaming was what saw them through those next few laborious hours, after that long chasm trail had made them endure another short tramp through a murky tunnel, whose only life within was the stuff of fluttering wings and unsettling tongues. Raising their moods—as a change from tedium normally does, before replacing it with a heightened sentience—the pass then looped from the darkness and suddenly upwards, ‘round the face of a broad cliff, which then steered them onto a small open area at the summit, where they could repose for a brief time among some menhirs beneath a cool overhang. Meanwhile, the rain had retracted to the otherwise more baleful rumblings behind the dark-grey yonder, like there was more to pass. Much more.
From the brow they spied out, miles across the southland, to where it appeared as grim as their errand. Nothing, barring an endless expanse of dirt and barrenness, occupied that remote vista, save for possibly a chance bank or hillock that peeked out from between the threads of sweeping fog, or else a lonely old oak, whose boughs were low and empty as they bobbed weakly through the drowsy wind. Then there was the vile moon. So insipid, so formidable, so unnaturally bright as it loomed over everything in all its gigantic terror. It was bigger than ever. Redmun sai
d that it was at its fullest now; leaving them with one question: ‘With that phase over…what ever was to come next?’ A query to which everyone knew the answer, whilst none were so brave as to utter it aloud—the onset of the lunar eclipse.
Then there was the landscape of Lór Island itself, and how it was the total opposite of this distant barren terrain beneath.
What was once a confusing maze of claustrophobic chasms, putrid shafts, dead ends, and deserted ways, had suddenly levelled out in the south to a dismal dell of unkempt wildlands of nettle, thorn, and decaying trees. High, malformed mesas were of the few and were standing in amongst broken ruins. These ruins were from a friendlier age, before that unforgiving vegetation had overrun everything in its path like newly drawn blood over a festering scab.
This jungle seemed to be in a state of eternal rot; never really perishing, never quite in bloom. Yet ever abundant. To hack through would’ve taken months.
North of the wildlands, and potentially the best route to go, was through a giant crater. It appeared less full, with more paths to take, going by what they could see from their bird’s-eye view. Further fiery trails lit the way down there. They were spreading out into dry banks, thus gradually flaring wide until, like mighty waterfalls, they gushed down into the red roasting pits of the crater’s lowland. Some here, some there, with several more dotted from clear sight, reminiscent of sparks frozen in the wind. The Erethaoí said that that secret pool was also down there somewhere. And that was exactly where they needed to go.
So much of that place had changed for the worse since the Dwelvin-Mites had last lived there. Forests used to be lush and rich green, not leaden and cold. Likewise, those hovels and homes were at one time cosy and clever, all tucked away on mountainsides and up trees, and nothing like the piles of rubble which existed now. Icrick and Khrum hardly recognized it. Time and vice had strangled it to the point where it had become a stranger to them, an underworld wherein only Lythiann’s devil and his subordinates would be proud to haunt.
Something, just then, came of great interest to Khrum. He was sort of happy, in a nostalgic way, but also frightened.
At the far end of the crater, he pointed out an old evergreen tree. Not that he needed to, it was so massive. Like the Grollo evergreen, it symbolized their ancient race. Only this dying evergreen—that was so resplendent that it occupied a grandeur entirely of its own, being practically on par with Percy’s palace—awaited any who wished, or were otherwise forced to, stray into the Pooka’s den.
“See that evergreen there?” he said, in a sightless, wistful stare. “It’s called the Ol’ Gróke. Meanin’ ‘the Ol’ Front.’ So it was that some of us used ta live out here, in the forests; closer ta nature. The outskirts. But that there tree? That was how the resht of us used ta get into our homes in the evenin’s if we were ever out ‘n’ about, visiting pals ‘n’ all that. It was the front gate ta our city. Now it’s the front gate ta somebody else’s city.”
“City?” William asked. “What city do you mean? I can’t see anything.”
Then the leprechaun hinted, “Not while you’re lookin’ at the Gróke head-on, ya won’t.”
William found a viewpoint, where he could better inspect the leprechaun’s claim. Stell joined him, and the girl also.
Redmun needn’t have bothered. He already knew what Khrum was on about. Besides, he was too busy fiddling with that bizarre vambrace of his. When he’d finished toying with it, he located a pedestal of his own, pointed it to the sky and, like a hand-cannon, his shoulder kicked back as a rush of flames flew up along his arm, then into the clouds, in the form of a bright fireball. Away it tore, high and long. And as it returned to the earth, it fizzled out into sparks. Having done this in tandem with an especially well-timed clatter of thunder, it escaped the others’ ears, so nobody asked about it. Redmun then went about his business, like it was the most normal thing in the world. He sat back and rested. He needed it, for flying takes a lot out of a man. It is not entirely naturally, so regular breaks are paramount.
Wren had her head cocked left. She was struggling to see what she was looking at, way off in the east.
But then Khrum’s statement soon became obvious to her, and the tiny chap said, with a feeling of forgotten pride, “This was what we called ‘Esylách.’ Our city. Under Anun’s wing, we built it. All hands together. An’ this is what we called Home.”
Disguised behind the dishevelled crown of that ageless evergreen, on top of a plateau, awaited a wide, empty pass, bordered by low mountain ranges which paved its way up to the foot of a high and mighty garrison. It had either been contrived wholly from bark and root since its birth, or else, throughout later years, had been ingested by those pitiless wildland. And were it not for the nebulous tell of some candlelit windows that flickered shyly through the pockets of shadow between those grand vines, our young William probably wouldn’t have seen it at all; nor would he have been able to distinguish it from, say, an uncultivated hill or, at a stretch, a young mountain. Far from Percy’s tree. Evil. Decrepit.
Flat chunks of earth orbited it, in mid-air. Merely hovering, with not the faintest stir. Icrick said that ‘the bad fella’ used these as cells. Cruel, aerial prisons, assigned to the impudent. Prisoners could either stay put until madness had claimed them, or else trust that frail breeze with the weight of their mounting troubles. Alas, the soil thereunder was littered with bone.
William recalled the nightmare he’d had back in the cave, of which he wanted no reminder, so he climbed back down, closed his eyes, and tried to forget about it.
As for their dreams, they indulged in many. Sleep? They partook in none. They didn’t even know what time of day it was. Not even Redmun could say. All he knew was that the moon was out, and the skies were fermenting. Alit with all styles of beastlike shapes. Their daydreams, however, helped to distract them from the ugliness of Shillíg Bég. And thus it was that they took a minute to themselves, knowing in silence that it could be their final stop. It was for this reason that Redmun insisted they lay out a nice spread from themselves from Thedius’ provisions, and so they did. They unpacked everything and dished it out.
Set out before them was a most flavoursome banquette. Three gorgeous shanks of golden, salty lamb, so juicy and tender that the meat was crumbling off it. All Redmun had to do was reheat them. Two good portions of smoked ribs, and three round loafs of wheat-germ with raisins in. To wash it all down, they each had a healthy flask of tongue-tingling lemonwater. A valiant effort. Suffice it to say, they just picked at it. Played with it, not talking. Would it not have been so terrible a sin to waste such good food, they probably would’ve left it untouched altogether. For food was the last thing on their minds, now that they were hours away from their eldest foe. This meal was like one’s last luxury before facing judgment at the noose. None could venture a decent mouthful without feeling the need to retch.
Barely nibbling, they kept to themselves, comforted only by the one little thing which managed to alleviate their matters slightly. Those dreams.
William was sat in a corner, eyelids shut, with his left arm propped on top of the Symphogram, and a corner of bread dangled loosely in the other hand. Once in a while he considered the device, albeit in a passive, tired sort of way. He wondered about Mysun’s power. Wondered if the time would soon be at hand when he could use it at will, instead of it presenting itself temporarily when he least expected it, only to vanish again till Lord knows when. Of course, he felt blessed and very lucky to have experienced it when he did. As without that sudden wave of strength, his friends could well have been done for back at the gate. Then again, who’s to say it wasn’t just the heat and the rain that caused it to buckle? he thought. It’s possible. And, yet again, disobliging notions returned to niggle at him. He hated how he kept bringing these things on himself. All this ‘what if?’ business. It only upset him.
In the end, he put it out of his mind. His ponderings then turned to his purpose on Lythiann, but no new answers came t
o light. So he fell back on other, happier thoughts. He returned to the Ballycongraggon of his memories, and saw himself by the fireside, in his lovely chair, with a buttermilk moustache. Beside him, on the end table, was a plate stacked high with cheese, onion, and spiced-beef sandwiches, next to a big, leather-bound book. And whilst he could not see her, he heard his mother humming away in the kitchen. It was a lovely dream, while it lasted. I say this because, the deeper into it he sank, the more his true life on Lythiann forced its way into it. What started out as a beautiful hymn from his mother’s lips, gradually lowered into a deeper voice of a more ominous tune; like the smoke-worn gullet of a strange, old woman. He felt the urge to ignore it and rest the book on his lap. He turned its pages and discovered that they were all blank, at first. Page for page he riffled, until he was riffling at speed, revealing a disturbing animation—William’s own face, being peeled of its skin, revealing the sniggering skull of death. It snorted and crowed, when the pages themselves trickled with sticky red. Then, not an inch from William’s right ear, an old woman’s face appeared; eagerly gawking with stabbing black eyes and a smile so perverse that never could it be expunged from his mind. Not even by a lifetime of most precious memories. Black spit oozed from her wrinkled grin.
William, startled by this, flung the book away, and was kicked from his dream with an involuntary, and almost silly-sounding, yap. Nobody noticed. They were busy dreaming dreams of their own. William tried to not let it affect him that much, so he pulled his cloak around him and soon faded into a dreamless rest.
Once more reaping the bounties of an otherwise bleak situation on account of his size, Khrum had located a nice bed of dry moss for himself, just above Icrick’s head, in a sandy crack. In there, he revelled in dreams of his own. Like the boy, he was just dozing, and wasn’t fully asleep.
Yielding quite the cheeky grin, from sideburn to sideburn, he was picturing himself back in Thedius’ parlour, walled-in on all sides by trays of cakes and gooey delights. All of this was then being fed to him by (wait for it…) a cute and feisty leprechaun Cailín, as they were known. As if that wasn’t enough, another stood next to him, and was handing him goblets of whisky with one hand while keeping him cool with a fresh banana leaf with the other. A smidgen delusional in his opinions of himself, I quite agree. Nevertheless, it was his daydream, so it would be rude of one to criticize. Pampered, he was. The cut of him. But he was content.
The Other of One: Book Two Page 50