"I'm good," I said, enjoying the mouthful of eggs and handing her back the empty plate. "I really need to find my friends."
"You took the wrong fork, eh?" Lug said.
I nodded. "Guess so."
"You know," Lug said, pulling his chin, "I could sell you one of my horses, if you want."
"Ah, that's okay," I said, waving off the suggestion. "I'm a little big for your horses, don't you think?"
Lug eyed me curiously. "Whaddya mean?" He hooked his thumb over his shoulder where two horses were tethered to a tree.
My eyes went wide. "Holy crap," was all I said as I got to my feet and went over to the pair of horses. Both were my size, standing tall and bold, their heads above my own. I gazed into their big brown eyes and petted the nearest one, a deep chestnut with a black mane and tail. A neat white star sat between his eyes. "Real horses," I said, rubbing his nose. "Where'd you get real horses?"
Lug shrugged. "The horse market. They carry more than the ponies. And they're easier to train. Bob," he called out. "Bow!"
The horse I was petting suddenly went down on one knee and bent his head to me.
"Rise, Bob," Lug called, and the horse stood back up on all fours.
"You named your horse Bob?" I said, as I raised an eyebrow.
"Yeah, what else would you name him?"
It was my turn to shrug. "What's the other one's name?"
"Bobette," Lug said, as if that should have been very obvious.
The mare turned her head and gave a whinny.
"Okay then," was all I could think of to say. Then, "I haven't got any money."
"Too bad," Lug said. "Got anything else?"
I looked around and saw nothing. I dug in my pockets and came up empty. I had my sword, which was around somewhere, but I couldn't give that up. I actually needed that. I had my watch, which was useless to me since it had been spinning backwards since I got to this place, which was why it wasn't fit to mention it before. But that would be more like a belt to Lug. So I offered it. "I got this," I said, pulling the beat up old Kmart watch from my wrist.
"Cool!" Lug said, taking the thing. "What is it?"
"A watch."
"To watch what?"
"It's supposed to tell time," I said.
"What's time?"
My eyebrows shot up. I shook my head. "It's a belt."
"Cool!" He unhooked the strap and wrapped the thing around his waist. Surprisingly, it actually fit. He buckled it in the last hole after sucking in his lack of gut and the watch face itself covered a good part of his groin area. "Cool!" he said again.
"So can I take the horse?"
"What else you got?"
"Just the clothes on my back," I said.
"I'll take 'em."
"Um..."
After much negotiation, Lug accepted the offer of my shoes and socks plus the watch and a large lock of my hair that he was now wearing as a wig. Bob the horse had no saddle but was lashed with groceries. I also had to help Lug unload the groceries and get them in the house. Afterwards, as I was pulling the reins up over Bob's nose, I said, "So what's with the purple shirt?"
"Oh this?" he said, flapping the front of his livery. "This was my grandfather's. He used to be a member of the king's guard."
"Oh," I said. "I thought they wore green top hats."
"They do now," Lug said. "They used to be sophisticated. Now they look like dopes."
I nodded. I couldn't exactly disagree.
"So hey," Lug added as I led Bob over to a large rock to mount. "You said you were searching for Amergin, right?"
"I'm supposed to kill him, yeah."
"Here's a hint. He hates peaches."
"Peaches?"
"Yeah," Lug said. "Don't know why but he hates them. With a passion."
"So what? I'm supposed to lob peaches at his head or something?"
Lug shrugged. "Dunno. I just know he hates peaches. Good luck!"
I got my legs around Bob's middle and turned his head around. Lug and his grandmother waved goodbye as I kicked the horse and got him moving. I waved back, glad to have met them. And I kept the peaches thing in my head, hoping that somehow it would come in handy. I couldn't even begin to guess how throwing peaches was going to help me in any way, let alone where in hell I would get peaches. I hadn't seen even one peach tree in all my time in Tuatha Dé land. But I kept my eyes peeled for one as I rode.
* * * *
Bouncing along on the back of Bob, my ass ached and my balls complained, but I still made good time. I got to the fork in the road and took the other path, following it carefully lest I get lost. I soon discovered yet another sign post, except this one had legible signs. I took the path that said it led to Black Mountain, hoping that this time I was headed in the right direction. The other sign led to a town with the unlikely name of Unlikely. I thought it highly unlikely that Cu and Crista had gone there, and I was right. At least, partly right.
I came across them at midday, startling Cu and Crista as well as the ponies, who both bolted at the sight of me and Bob. Crista put her hand to her heart and Cu went running after the ponies.
"Sorry!" I called after him, sliding off of Bob's back and rubbing my bruised ass.
"Where did you come from?" Crista said. "I thought we'd lost you for good."
I huffed. "Did that thought make you happy?"
"No," she said. "Cu kept propositioning me."
"Sorry," I said.
"It's okay. It's kinda flattering. Kinda."
Cu came back with both ponies in tow. "Where the hell did you get that thing from?"
"This is the sword we bought from Tat," I reminded him, gesturing to the sword that was once again strapped to my back.
"Not that," Cu said, pointing even harder. "That!"
"Oh!" I slapped my forehead. "This is Bob. Say hi, Bob."
Bob lifted a foreleg and waved hello.
"Bob?" Crista repeated.
"I didn't name him," I said with a shrug. "Lug named him."
"Who is Lug?" Cu said. "What is Lug?"
"You were right the first time," I said as I sat down and continued to explain. When I was done, we all stood back up and got on our way again, this time back to a group of three plus ponies and now a horse with the unusual name of Bob.
We walked until nightfall, and by the time night fell, I knew we were going to be out in the open. Crista had told me that she and Cu had stayed in the town with the unlikely name of Unlikely the night before. In separate rooms, she assured me. The town wasn't too far from the fork in the road. But this night...
"So are we really going to sleep out here, Cu?" I said as I tied Bob to a nearby tree. He snuffled my hair and blew warm breath on my neck. I patted his nose and went to join Cu and Crista.
"Where else do you expect us to sleep?" Cu said.
"I dunno. Couldn't we find a house or something? Pitch a tent?"
"What tent?"
I shrugged.
"What are you so afraid of?" Crista said.
"Who said I was afraid?" I answered, acting tough and puffing out my measly chest, which deflated a moment later.
"Bob did," Crista said, pointing at the horse.
Bob shrugged his shoulders and suddenly became interested in an interesting patch of green grass.
"Well, the old woman I met said there were things in the woods that would eat us," I said. "Possibly slowly."
"That sounds unpleasant," Crista said. "But you have your sword."
"Yes," I said. "But that's what got me in trouble on the road."
"That's because you weren't paying attention," Cu said to me as he came into our vague camp with an armload of fire wood. He set about clearing brush and making a teepee out of the wood. "Fire'll keep the critters away."
"Ew, I hate critters," Crista said, shivering.
"You can sleep next to me," Cu offered, licking his lips in a less than sensual manner, which made Crista shiver even more.
"That's okay," she said. "I'll take my c
hances."
"Hey, Fractious!" Cu called out to me. "Make yourself useful and help me get this fire going. I got me a brace of pigeons to roast up."
"Won't that attract the critters?" I knelt beside him and banged two rocks together to make sparks. "And what's a brace?"
"Eh," Cu said with a typical shrug, unwilling as always to answer what he considered to be my stupid questions.
"Well, I don't want to be eaten," I said, drawing the sword from behind my back. "I'm sleeping with this under my pillow tonight."
"You don't have a pillow," Cu reminded me.
"Oh... Yeah. Right."
We got the fire going and spitted Cu's two pigeons, which apparently made a brace, even though I wasn't sure if that was only true of pigeons or if you could have a brace of other things. They made a measly meal but at least we all ate a little. Cu even let me have some, stating we were out of bread and he hadn't thought to buy any in Tara. I knew he was lying when he pulled out a half loaf of bread and began munching on it.
"That's bread," I said. "You said we didn't have any more bread."
Cu looked down at the obvious loaf of bread. "This isn't bread," he told me. "It's... salami."
I smiled, somewhat delighted. "Whatever."
Cu only continued to eat his bread, breaking off a piece to pass off to Crista when she asked for some salami. Later that night, as the fire continued to roar, we sat around in companionable silence, listening to the rustling in the woods around us. Crista moved closer to me, and so did Bob the horse. The ponies shuffled closer to Cu, probably finding comfort in someone more their size. The rustling grew more and more intense then suddenly the fire went out in a whoosh!
I heard noises as I got to my feet, swinging my sword carefully lest I lop off the wrong heads but my valiant efforts didn't last long. I heard Cu cussing up a storm then a loud thump then a thump like something landing hard on the ground. I heard Crista give a tight scream then another thump. Then I heard a thump and felt a thump on the top of my head.
* * *
chapter 8
I should have known. I really should have known, but even though I'd heeded the warning given me by Lug and his grandmap, I still ended up hung upside down on a stick being carried through the forest by little men who resembled the half-goat woman I'd seen in the orgy city of Tara. I could hear shrieking which may or may not have been a foreign language but somebody had hit me so hard over the head that things were a little fuzzier than usual. That wasn't helping much of anything. That and the fact that my head kept hitting the ground as I bobbed and bounced along.
When I finally was able to get my wits about me, which took a while, all things considering, I could see Crista was in the same predicament as I was. She was being carried by four large goat men. She seemed to be unconscious.
When I turned my head around as far as it would go, I could see Cu also tied to a stick. Behind him, I could just barely make out Bob the horse, who was walking with his head hung low, his nose brushing the ground. I assumed the two ponies were with him but I couldn't see them.
We bounced and bobbed along for a while, and I listened closely to the shrieking dialect of our captors in hopes that I could pick out a word or two, but all I could understand was, "Shriek!" and "Shloom!" which didn't make much sense to me. After what felt like eons to my head, which was filled with blood from being upside down for so long and still hitting the ground on occasion, the group came to a clearing in the forest which was filled with huts made from pine bark and branches.
The group of goat men dropped me like a ton of bricks, letting my head crash to the ground. I tried to rub my head, but the fact that my hands were tied together made that impossible. So I rubbed my head on the ground to try and regain my senses, but that only got dirt in my eyes that I couldn't rub out. With eyes watering like fountains, I saw a couple of blurry goat people come to me and cut my bindings.
I shot to my feet, fell over because my feet were still tied but managed to yell, "Now, Bob!"
Bob just stood there, blinking.
"Damn it," I muttered just before I was surrounded. "Stupid horse."
Amidst shrieking and shlooming, I held up my hands, trying to make them see that I was unarmed. That didn't seem to matter, since they began pointing pointy sticks at me. "What do you want from me?" I finally bawled, halfway to sobbing.
"Don't provoke them," I heard Cu say from behind me.
I turned, managed to get to my feet and sought refuge behind him after a good amount of hopping. "Who are they?"
"The Goat People," Cu said.
"Really?" My voice cracked. "Nobody could think up a better name for them?"
"What better name could there be?" he said. "They've got goat legs and goat feet and people torsos and people heads with goat horns growing out of them. Goat. People."
Crista decided to come to at that moment. She sat up in the dirt, groaning and holding her head.
"Crista!" I called. "Are you okay?"
"Aside from a massive headache, I'm fine," she said. Then she looked around. "Oh yeah, aside from all these funny goat people dancing around me."
The Goat People were doing just that; dancing around her. They were shrieking and shlooming and throwing their hands up in the air, and waving their pointy sticks in the air too. Crista staggered to her feet, which was easy for her since her feet were not tied, and the Goat People all looked up into her face. Then suddenly they were all on their knees with their foreheads to the ground, circled around her.
Crista looked at me with wide eyes but all I could do was give her the same wide eyed look. One particular Goat Person stood up before all the others. He wore a feathery hat on his head and bells around his fetlocks. He shloomed at Crista and pointed at her head with his pointy stick.
"What do they want, Cu?" Crista said, as she tried to back away from the Goat Person with the stick. "I really don't want to be shish kabob."
Cu listened closely to the shrieking and shlooming of the Goat Person, his head cocked and his eyes thoughtful. After a moment, he said, "No clue. Sorry!"
"What do I do?" Crista cried, sounding a bit panicky.
"Show 'em your boobs!" Cu suggested.
"Not what do you want me to do!" Crista yelled back, now holding up her hands and trying to appear innocent. "What do they want me to do?"
"Do a little dance!" I suggested.
"What?"
I did a little demonstration shimmy.
Crista followed my lead but this only seemed to anger the dancing Goat Person and his pointy stick jabbed at her stomach. Crista stomped a foot on the ground and reached out to grab the stick. She caught hold of it between her hands and yanked it out of the free hands of the Goat Person who was tormenting her. She jabbed back and the Goat Person jumped away, the bells on his feet jangling loudly. The other Goat People suddenly jumped to their feet and began roaring, "Shloom!" at the top of their lungs.
"Well, hey now!" somebody cried out from somewhere behind me. Everybody turned in that direction, including me. A tall, lanky man wearing pink stretchy pants and a white silk shirt was approaching us with a saunter that was unmistakable flamboyant. "Who are these lovely folks you've brought me?"
The Goat People suddenly stood in orderly fashion, lined up in rows with their spines straight and their chins up. The bell-laden Goat Person came forward and bowed his head, running through a string of animated shrieks. He pointed back over his shoulder at us.
Crista had joined Cu and me and was standing behind us, peeking over my shoulder, although she would have gotten an even better view over Cu's shoulder.
The man in the pink pants flipped his wrist at the bell laden Goat Person, who moved out of his way. "I'll see for myself," he said as he approached us. "Hey, ya'll."
"Um, hey?" was my reply.
"Whatcha all doin' in my neck of the woods?" He stopped before us, one hand on his hip and the other stroking his clean shaved chin.
"Wish we knew," I said, deciding it best that
I deal with this pink panted man. "What are you doing out here?"
"I live here, silly," he said with a bright smile. "But what are you all doin' here?"
I looked around. "Your...uh...Goat People brought us here."
"Oh, they like to do that," he said. "Most times they just let ya'll go. Sometimes they keep you for dinner."
I gulped and swallowed. "I'm not sure I want to be dinner."
"Oh, don't worry about that!" Pink Pants said with a flick of his wrist. "I only let them eat the Tuatha Dé. Not humans. I see so few of my own people out here."
Cu gulped and swallowed.
Pink Pants laughed, a high squeal. "If you're with them, you don't have to worry about a thing. We'll have roast duck and caviar tonight!" He put two fingers to his mouth and made a loud kissing sound before flinging his fingers into the air.
"Um," I said.
Pink Pants sauntered up to us and held out a hand. "I'm Roger. Roger Valentine." He put the other hand to the side of his mouth and whispered, "That's my stage name. What's yours?"
"Um," I said again, "I don't have a stage name."
"Silly! What do your friends call you?" he said, still standing there, holding out his hand.
"Um," I said.
Crista took initiative and stepped out from behind me. "I'm Crista Himmelmen," she said, extending her hand. Roger took it and gave it a flippant shake. "This is Guy Fractious and Cu of the Tuatha Dé."
"Guy?" Roger repeated. "Seriously? Your name is Guy?"
I rolled my eyes and said, "It's come in handy."
"Whatever," Roger said. "I'll call you..." He rubbed his chin. "Eh, Guy is fine."
"So," Crista said, "what are you doing here?"
"I live here," Roger said with a laugh. "I already told ya. I. Live. Here."
"But why do you live here?"
Roger opened his arms wide. "What better place?!"
The Goat People, who had been idling around, scratching their heads, suddenly came to life and gave a ragged, shlooming cheer.
"They like you," Roger said with a wink. "Come on, people. Are ya hungry?"
Cu, Crista and I looked uncertainly at each other. In the end, we shrugged and followed Roger, who appeared to be the divine leader of the Goat People. Tell ya the truth, I really had no idea what was going on.
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