“If only ya played by the rules,” Girtìlboun continued, poking around in the brush. “I’d only be eaten one or two o’ ya right now! But now...as a penalty...I get the whole bunch. I’d get a right good feed out o’ you lot too, I reckon. A nice leprechaun and Grogoch stew, followed by some fried boy and minced horse, with roasted horseman brains for desert. Sounds like a royal banquet indeed!”
They still couldn’t see where he was. Neither did he sound far enough away from them to be in any way comforted.
“What’ll we do?” Icrick whispered nervously. “I don’t fancy being stewed.”
Trying to remain calm, William said, “Well, it’s only a wood, right?”
“Right! And?” said The Head, who was also shivering at the notion of having his brain roasted like a chestnut.
“So, it can’t be all that big, despite what he says,” stated the boy. “If we move quietly enough, we might be able to sneak past him and get out o’ here.”
“But what if we never find a way out, like he’s making out?” whinged The Head.
“Well, we’ll just have to trust our own intuition over his word then,” said William, when two trees got violently separated behind them like curtains and Girtìlboun stuck his devilish face through.
“BOO!” he snarled.
From out-and-out terror, Ifcus twisted and neighed to such a jolt that The Body lashed out instinctively with his axe and struck the flaming pincer of the Thiagoné, sending a rain of sparks cascading into the air. When this happened, the trees bolted again, for fear of catching alight and burning the rest of the woodland to ash.
“Why ya little—” snarled Girtìlboun.
Suddenly two oaks lumbered past him, knocking him to the ground.
Waddling off ahead, Icrick screeched, “GO! WHILE WE CAN!”
As fast as they could, they bolted deeper into the trees. Meanwhile, Girtìlboun, after much effort, managed to flip himself back onto his skinny insect legs.
“Silence!” he ordered again, yet to be ignored by the trees.
Then, with sadistic conviction, he yelled out a second time, “I...SAID...SILENCE!” and the trees suddenly ceased in their dread like before.
Nevertheless, this gave the others a decent chance to get out of harm’s way. They could also get a much better glimpse of the outside world as the wood was shifting about, for the trees seemed to be drawn to an outer perimeter, an opening, as though it would somehow save them from the flames. But they were restricted from leaving the actual boundaries of the woodland floor due to, I would expect, some manner of binding spell or such. After all, these trees (however grudgingly they may have been to do so) played a crucial role in Girtìlboun’s twisted dealings, and to let them wander so far was not what he would consider ‘good for the trade.’
“Okay, so it is the fire they’re afraid o’!” William concluded, as they all skulked inside a deep hollow. “Icrick, do you still have that torch on you?”
“Yes. Here it is,” said the Grogoch, pulling the torch from his pack.
“Great! I’ll need you to light it up in a minute,” said the lad, grabbing up two more dead boughs from under the leaves. “Khrum goes with me. Icrick, you keep your own torch. And Crosco, you can take this branch.”
“Well, what do you intend to do?!” asked The Head, gazing miserably at his particularly flimsy-looking bough.
“The trees seem to be heading for the end o’ the wood every time they get frightened, right?” William explained.
“Right,” they whispered.
“Well, we’ll each take a torch, climb up into a tree, and hope that they will eventually carry us to the end. Then, when we get there, we can just jumped down and make a break for it.”
“How do you suppose that lunacy will work?” said The Head, frowning.
“The flames, Crosco lad!” Khrum added, finally catching on. “Ya saw how they reacted ta those sparks! Imagine how fasht they’ll go if there’s a torch whippin’ them along.”
“Exactly!” William nodded. “The trees should keep running...provided there’s always a naked flame burning, spurring them on like.”
“Sounds like a risky move!” whimpered Icrick. “What happens if they carry us right back to that dirty old Thiagoné?”
“It’s our only chance right now, Icrick. Unless ye have any better ideas? And believe me, if ye can think o’ anything easier than this, I’d be more than happy to try it.”
None of them had any better proposals, so they were stuck with this plan.
“Why do we have to take separate trees though?” Icrick asked. “Surely we can all go in the one?”
William then explained, “Yeah, but with all of us stuck in one tree, it could be easy pickin’s for him.”
“Hmmm, I don’t know...” Icrick replied doubtingly. “It sounds like a serious gamble to me.”
“Don’t worry. Did you see how those trees knocked Girtìlboun to the ground just then?” the boy asked.
“Well...yes.”
“Well, if we get separated, and someone gets into trouble, I think we’d stand a better chance o’ defending one another if we have our own trees. Hopefully it won’t come to that, though.”
“Hmmm...well...okay!” the Grogoch anxiously allowed. “I trust you...I think!”
“Thanks, Icrick!” smirked the lad, amused by how little he sugar-coated it.
Standing above them were three stumpy oak trees; decrepit and branchless, though they carried an appearance of ligneous creatures, having been fashioned to be fairly beastlike through their beefy knots and lack of limb. With nothing else for it, they each climbed up into the trees and saddled themselves securely into the branches. Growing within Icrick’s oak was some old vine, which he handed out to the others to use as makeshift reins.
Passing around some lengths, he said, “Here! These might help us hold on better.”
“Good thinking, Icrick!” said William, slinging one around his trunk. “Now, let’s get these torches lit.”
Holding their torches close together, Icrick set them alight with three sharp snaps of his flint.
“Are ye ready?” asked William, holding the torch high, with the leprechaun settled on his shoulder.
“As we’ll ever be, I suppose,” The Head said, gulping, with Ifcus barely peeping over his collar.
“Ready!” Icrick quaked, his eyes sealed shut.
With his torch, William lashed his tree with a fierce whip, like it were a steed.
“HEEA!” he cried.
Suddenly, in a flurry of orange sparks, the tree hoisted up its roots and stomped off. Following his example, the others did the same, and their trees galloped after him with equal haste.
Pandemonium kicked off once again in that enchanted wood as the timorous trees pounded through the scrub, groaning and howling.
At first it proved quite difficult to settle themselves on the branches, but they soon adapted. It was still scathingly uncomfortable. Bobbing up ‘n’ down upon that rough bark was more than any man should ever be asked to bear, especially in a kilt. And yet, they were heading at a steady pace, thus making much more progress than they would have done otherwise.
Through the wood they lumbered, dodging wild oaks at every turn. Old Girtílboun probably didn’t know what was happening.
Holding on tightly was all that they could do, for if only they could’ve somehow steered those wooden beasts by use of their reins it would have been something...only they couldn’t. The only thing to comfort our heroes was the knowledge that they were still together and had not yet been divided.
In line formation, they plodded along, as frantic oaks grinded and grated by them in terror.
“Get off! Get away!” cried Icrick with a wave if his torch, sending them into retreat.
Leaves plummeted and wafted through the air as the commotion grew ever worse. Girtìlboun’s cries could scarcely be heard beneath it all. This drove William and the others to beat their trees even harder so as to drown out the foul wretch and his horrid co
mmands.
“QUIET!” he was yelling, till blue in the face, to be dampened by the beatings of chaos.
William could see more and more of outer Lythiann, and what appeared to be a great pumpkin patch just at the wood’s edge. They were almost out of there, or at least close enough to scurry out should they somehow become dismounted from their wooden steeds.
Good fortune, it seemed, wasn’t entirely on their side, however. For swinging through the bedlam, from branch to branch, was Girtìlboun, in his great silverback form.
“I can see your lights, ya blasted swindlers! I’ll catch ye yet!” he roared.
“He’s gainin’ on us, lad!” yelled Khrum, monitoring the Thiagoné’s progress.
After branching off into separate, unpredictable routes, their group was no longer united in their escape. It was obvious that the trees themselves had brains no larger than walnuts, if they even had any at all. Because, aside from merely attempting to reach the woodland edge, it appeared that they were otherwise just running ‘round and around, with little consideration for any logical progress. Only by sheer luck did some of the rogue oaks actually succeed in making it to the border and, even then, they still scurried back inside, only to get lost again. William was distraught by this. He believed that, once the trees found the rim, that they would just linger there, allowing our heroes the opportunity to escape the Thiagoné for good.
“Aw, what’s this all about?” he so murmured.
“What’s what about?!” cried Khrum through the noise.
“Oh...um...nothing! Nearly there!” the lad found himself saying.
“Good!” Khrum replied, hopping about like a jumping bean. “Any more o’ this bouncin’ about ‘n’ I’m goin’ to vomit up all over the place.”
“Which bloody way are we going?” Crosco then cried, as he whipped his tree like a madman. “This blasted oak doesn’t know its left from its right!”
Heeding him through the mayhem, William replied from a different area of the wood, “We’re nearly there. I think it just...um...it just takes them a while to figure out their direction. But we’ll have to act fast once we reach the end. We’ll have to jump before the trees run back inside.”
“Run back inside?!” cried Crosco. “You never said anything about that! Oh, I knew this was a stupid idea.”
All of a sudden, the massive ape landed in Crosco’s tree and leaned in at him with a drooling smirk.
Shuddering with fright, The Head screeched involuntarily, “MY HEART!”
“Appetiza’ numba’ one!” smiled the gorilla, with a thick string of saliva dangling from his fang-filled mouth. “I’ll leave your eyeballs for the crows.”
“Get back! Get back, I say!” cried The Head, with The Body swinging his torch left and right.
“This is the end for ya...gov’na’,” drawled a grinning Girtìlboun when, with one impeccable stroke and a cluster of sparks, the blazing torch pared him right across the eyes.
“Aha! Got you!” laughed The Head.
Wildly the ape screamed as he rubbed his scalded eyes, before lashing out and knocking the torch from Crosco’s hand, after which he tried snagging the brute who’d stolen his sight.
“Ya’ve blinded me! I’ll skin ya for this!” screamed Girtìlboun. “I’ll scoop out your gizzard and boil it in oil.”
Unfortunately for the Thiagoné—though fortunate for Crosco—the wood had almost ended. So the Dullahan vaulted from the moving tree, with a frightful neigh from his back, before crashing to the ground, where he scrambled for the pumpkin patch. Little did he know, his torch had strayed into a dry thicket and was caught in the gust, thus setting the wilted shrubs ablaze, and much more of the woodland quickly thereafter.
Fire cascaded through the trees, like the brushwood itself was drenched in lard. But before the Dullahan could get caught up in the blaze, he leapt from the woodland into the soft muck of the pumpkin patch. Before long, from out of the wall of flames which were now scaling fast, sprang William, Khrum and Icrick, all masking their faces from the fire, and they all landed into the safety of the rich soil beside the Dullahan.
“What happened there?” yelled Icrick, scrambling to his feet. “How did it catch fire?”
“He knocked the torch from my grip!” replied Crosco, looking upon the inferno in terrible awe. “It wasn’t my fault.”
From within the infernal blaze, they heard the diminishing bellows of the Thiagoné as the fire consumed him to his very ruin, and the once-enchanted forest fell to the ever-feared tongues of their fiery foe. They could but watch as the sparks wafted into the blackness of the night.
“I feel so sorry for those trees,” Icrick sulked, failing to consider how bad Crosco must’ve felt, even though the Dullahan didn’t avow to it.
“Ara, they were enchanted trees anyways, Icrick lad,” said Khrum. “Under his shpell, no doubt. That’s no way ta live. But life’ll fill that wood again...sometime; when there’s not a foul scoundrel ta dominate them againsht their will. If ya ask me...I think they’re better off! Put outta their misery like.”
“I reckon so too,” added William. “Not to mention the lives that were saved.”
“What lives?” asked Icrick.
“Anyone who had yet to go through that wood!” the boy answered, like it was obvious. “Well done, Crosco!”
“Well done?” asked The Head, sounding somewhat surprised for being deemed in such a way.
Folding his arms, whilst looking at the burning wood, William pondered out, “Yeah, honestly! You chose the greater good and all that. That’s what you meant to do, I take it?”
“Well...yes! Yes, I suppose it was,” answered The Head. “Ahem...of course it was! I knew it all along.”
To that, William and Khrum glanced at one another with funny grins.
In that very same moment, realisation grasped the boy in a clutch as firm as steel, when he suddenly remembered Anun’s beautiful utterance.
“The voice!” he gasped.
“What about it?” said Crosco, getting scared again.
Without answering, William approached the wall of flame with distress. It was far too sweltering for him to enter. Trees collapsed and toppled within, fizzling and creaking in the heat of the inferno, and William’s face filled by degree with utter dread.
“Oh, no!” cried the Grogoch, his paws to his face. “What have we done?”
“This can’t be!” said Khrum, with the reflecting flames glistening in the sadness of his eyes.
“What are you lot going on about?” exclaimed The Head, more worried now than ever. “The voice? It could have just been a trick for all we know. To lure us into that Thiagoné’s trap.”
Just then, William and William alone heard a soft whisper in his ear saying, “Fear not, William. Never was I in those trees. When the moment permits me, I can speak to you...in spirit. Just as I am now. However, these connections will be far between. I will nonetheless aid you as best I can when it happens. Hence, beyond the birches your bounty lies. Now go. Claim it as your own. Our love is with you, William. Always and forever!”
“William! What will we do?” cried Icrick, tugging on the boy’s sleeve, who then sighed at him with a relieved sort of smile, “Icrick, it’s all right.”
“But what will we do! She’ll be burnt alive!” screeched the Grogoch.
“Really, Icrick...it’s okay!” William insisted. “She wasn’t even there in the first place. It was just her voice.”
“Well...a-a-are you sure?” the Grogoch sniffled.
Patting him on the back, William winked and said, “I’m sure; trust me.”
Sensing veracity in the boy’s gesture, Khrum let out a long breath and muttered to himself, “Well, thank the shtars for that!”
“Who’s voice was it then?” asked Crosco, feeling somewhat out of the loop. “Did you know her or something?”
“Just someone I met when I came to Lythiann...that’s all,” answered the lad.
“Oh, have it your own way th
en. Keep your secrets!” replied a sulking Head, returning to his normal behaviour once again.
The surrounding vegetable patch was encumbered with many pumpkins of every imaginable size. It was situated at the base of the birch-topped hill, whereon they saw a pointy-eared figure peering down into the fire, as if it was investigating the goings-on. But it soon disappeared back over the mound.
Deploying his staff for the walk ahead, William asked, “What was that thing? It looked like a dog...”
“A fox I’d expect,” Icrick guessed, still glancing now and again at the fire. “They thrive in these parts, year ‘round.”
Sceptical of the creature, Crosco remained silent, though mindful...
Over the pumpkin patch they strolled, then uphill towards the birches through which they weren’t long tramping. Past that, they came upon a natural gallery of blooming branches, which led into a clearing. Sure enough, this would lead to a way out.
* * *
Once at the gallery mouth they all peeped out; eight blinking points of light and a shining head. The moon seemed much larger from here, just high of the hills, as it lined the passing clouds with a paler shade of grey. Upon the foreground stood some mangled, leafless trees, which emitted haunting silhouettes to the moon’s face as their branches stabbed northward. Then, just to their right, upon a malformed eroded knoll, was the tower itself...
It was tall. So high, in fact, that they had to completely tilt their heads back in order to see its pinnacle. It housed no walls nor courtyard, not even a spire did it have. Its only features were two small windows near the crown, beneath which was a wide indentation in the brickwork. Through this dent, and by the sombre impressions of the moon, the tower emitted the likeness of a great, ungodly face, whose head was haloed by the stagnant swirl of grim cloud; all the while flocks of wicked old rooks tirelessly encircled its parapets.
“I’m telling you, this place is full of badness. We must not get any closer,” insisted The Head.
The Other of One - Book One: The Lythiann Chronicles Page 26