Blue in the Face

by Gerry Swallow

  Elspeth craned her neck forward, trying to see what the path before her held in store, but its curvy design lent her a glimpse no more than fifteen or twenty feet ahead.

  “You could come with me,” she said. “That is to say, you should come with me. After all, I’m still eleven and technically in need of a guardian. It is the law, you know.”

  “I would if I could,” said Dumpty. “But I’ve been declared an enemy of the Crown. Should I be captured, it would not go well for me.”

  With that, Dumpty shook Elspeth’s hand and wished her luck in her quest to find her way home. As he turned and waddled back the way they had come, Elspeth just stood and watched, trying to keep sight of him for as long as she could. When the last bit of him had disappeared among the trees, Elspeth stood motionless and in complete silence. She thought of calling out for Dolly Dew Eyes and wondered what had become of her former best friend.

  In the end, she decided that that would amount to a sign of weakness, and instead resigned herself to completing the journey alone. Elspeth picked up a long, thin stick that she felt would be good to have for protection. As she began to sharpen the end of the stick with a flat rock, the stick (Gene to his friends), felt compelled to voice his objection.

  “Whoa,” he shouted. This outburst caused Elspeth to drop the stick with a high-pitched shriek, having momentarily forgotten where she was. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “I’m sharpening you,” said Elspeth. With an angry huff, she plucked Gene from the ground and returned to the work at hand.

  “Sharpening me?” said Gene. “I certainly hope you’re not planning on using me as some sort of weapon.” When his protest was met with only the sounds of Elspeth’s determined honing, he continued. “You should know that I am a lifelong pacifist. And I strenuously object to any attempts to fashion me into a spear or some other pointy implement of war.”

  “Relax,” Elspeth muttered. “I promise I’ll only use you in self-defense.”

  Gene thought these terms reasonable. He agreed to allow the sharpening to continue, although he didn’t have much say in the matter being that he was just a stick—and a pacifist stick at that.

  When she had completed the task, Elspeth took Gene in hand and the two continued on together. By and by, the path grew wider and the trees thinner until finally, just up ahead, was the very edge of the forest. Standing at the border between forest and desert were three hand-painted signs, spaced about six feet apart, reading, in order from left to right: KEEP OUT!, DO NOT ENTER!, and DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT!

  Elspeth, a self-taught expert on the art of disobeying rules, chose to disregard the signs. But as she made a move to sidestep them, the sign on the left shouted, “Hey! Can’t you read? I said, keep out!”

  Elspeth leapt back. But her fear and surprise quickly turned to anger.

  “Of course I can read,” Elspeth shouted, while thrusting Gene the pacifist stick in the direction of the sign. “Better than you can, I’ll bet. Besides, I couldn’t care less what you say. You’re just a boring old sign.”

  “Boring?” said Keep Out, while Do Not Enter and Don’t Even Think About It snickered at his expense. “Quiet!” he said to them. “This isn’t funny.” Then Keep Out hopped, pole and all, several feet over until he stood directly in front of Elspeth, blocking her path.

  “You obviously have no idea to whom you are speaking,” the sign sputtered. “My father just happens to be . . .”

  “Wait. Let me guess,” said Elspeth. “Slippery When Wet? Duck Crossing? Employees Must Wash Hands Before Returning to Work?”

  While her outburst absolutely enraged Keep Out, it had the other two signs doubled over with laughter. “Duck Crossing,” said Do Not Enter. “Now that was a good one.”

  Keep Out hopped angrily back toward his fellow signs. “Go ahead, laugh it up. But just so you know, I’m putting you both on report.”

  “For what?” Don’t Even Think About It scoffed.

  Without warning, Keep Out lunged forward and head butted (or sign butted) Don’t Even Think About It, striking with sufficient force as to knock the rival sign right off its stick, sending it clanging to the hard dirt. “For leaving your post,” sneered Keep Out. “Now, does anyone else want a piece of this action?” He made a move toward Do Not Enter, who was no longer laughing. The smaller sign backed away quickly.

  “Easy now,” he said. “I don’t want any trouble.”

  Satisfied that he had reestablished himself as the alpha sign, Keep Out turned his attention back to Elspeth, whom, he soon discovered, had seized upon the infighting as an opportunity to slip away unnoticed. All that remained of the girl was a sign of her own making, scratched in the dirt with her stick. It read: NO SIGNS ALLOWED!

  “You think you’re funny, do you?” shouted Keep Out. “You’ll be sorry you disobeyed me!”

  Elspeth heard the warning twice as it echoed off the steep, reddish cliffs rising up at the far end of Torcano Alley. When the words quickly faded into silence, Elspeth found her mind muddled with a new set of questions. Would she ever find her way home again? Were her parents out looking for her or happily going about their lives preparing taxes and peddling hearing aids door to door? Perhaps it was far worse than that, Elspeth thought. What if she came to find that her parents actually dumped her off here so as to be rid of her once and for all?

  If that were the case, she vowed right then and there to call the police and have them thrown in jail just as soon as she could get to a phone. With the both of them firmly locked up, she could have as many alpacas as she desired. An entire herd perhaps. Or did alpacas travel in flocks? Regardless, Elspeth wished she had one at that moment on which to ride.

  If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride,

  Until they got hungry enough to eat those horses.

  Then no more rides.

  Chapter 8

  With her father frequently out on the road, canvassing new territories for potential hearing-aid buyers, her mother busy preparing other people’s taxes, and her friends nonexistent, Elspeth had spent a great deal of her young life in solitude. Still, she had never before felt quite so alone as she did now, plodding across the vast flatlands of this strange and eerily quiet place.

  The earth here was littered with black rocks, varying in size from pebble to boulder. The ground was scarred with thin fissures and wide crevasses so deep that darkness hid the bottoms of them and made Elspeth wonder if there was any end to them at all. She could step or skip over the smaller ones, but the larger faults required her to alter her course time and time again, taking her along a zigzag path that would more than double the length of the hike.

  Walking for nearly an hour now, she had long ago discarded Gene when it became apparent that the stick would never shut up.

  “What do they always say about us?” said Gene. “Sticks and stones will break your bones. What kind of thing is that to tell a child? Sure, I’ve known some stones in my day, but sticks? It’s just not in our nature. Still, they won’t even let kids play with us. ‘Put that stick down,’ they say. ‘It’ll poke somebody’s eye out.’ As if I would ever do such a thing. It’s ridiculous is what it is. And kindling? Don’t even get me started on kindling. You want to know what I think?”

  “No, I don’t,” said Elspeth. As lonely and in need of a weapon as she may have been, she’d finally had enough. She hurled the talking stick, end over end, into a patch of tall, dry grass.

  “Hey,” called out Gene. “That was not very nice at all. Come back here, you little brat.”

  “Sticks and stones,” Elspeth muttered over her shoulder as she marched onward. Nearing the red cliffs at the far end of Torcano Alley, she felt as though she was finally getting close.

  The directions thus far were impeccable, and there she was now, standing before the narrow trail that zigzagged its way to the top of the cliff. Still, she hadn’t expected the way up to be quite so steep. It seemed better suited to a mountain goat or an alpaca than to an
eleven-year-old girl who had just walked three miles across a fractured desert landscape. She decided that before going on, she would sit for a moment and rest her legs.

  She found a large rock, and prior to taking a seat upon it she issued a preemptive warning. “I’m going to sit on you now. And I don’t want to hear any back sass,” she spouted, taking the tone often directed at her by her know-it-all teachers.

  Elspeth lowered herself onto the rock and was both surprised and relieved when it said nothing. Perhaps the rock, like the Spoon, spoke only Portuguese. Or it could be that the rock, in awe of Elspeth’s presence, found itself at a complete loss for words. Regardless, her time resting upon it was cut short by a whirring, crunching noise that grew louder by the second. It was as if someone had poured a handful of rocks into a blender and turned it on high. Although she had never before heard anything like it, somehow she found herself blurting out, “Torcano!”

  She rose quickly and there it was—no more than a quarter mile away and coming toward her, swirling black and orange, two hundred feet in height, from slender foot to wide, hungry mouth. Elspeth stood, unable to move, mesmerized by its immense beauty and destructive power.

  The torcano was sweeping along the face of the cliff, pelting it with rock in both solid and liquid form. Patches of sage and dry grass in its path evaporated like cotton candy in water, instantly and without remnant. Elspeth’s heart pumped so furiously she felt as though it might burst right through her sternum. The only safe place to be was at the top of the cliff, but it was clear that she would never make it in time. She’d get halfway up at best before being instantly cremated like her grandmother, her ashes taken by the breeze and perhaps scattered over the forest and those who had annoyed her.

  The only other option was to try to outrun it. Without further hesitation, Elspeth took off, her pudgy arms pumping furiously, her weary feet pounding at the dusty ground. She didn’t have to look back over her shoulder to realize she was losing the race. The whirring and crunching grew increasingly loud, and pebbles landed at her feet still smoking. One hit the back of her arm, and it felt like the sting of a hornet, sharp and deep. She knew there would be others and winced in anticipation. A second smoldering rock hit the back of her leg, singeing her calf and nearly knocking her to the ground.

  Just when she thought she had taken her last step, she heard a voice calling out from above. “Hey, up here!” She stopped and frantically scanned the cliff side for the source, but in a world of talking sticks, rocks, and bushes, she wasn’t sure what she was looking for. When the voice spoke again, saying, “This way,” a quick flash caught her eye. About twenty feet up the face of the cliff, she spied the tiny figure of a man, no bigger than a groundhog. The glint of light had been the sun’s reflection off the man’s shiny, dime-size belt buckle. Nattily dressed in colorful silk, he stood at the mouth of a small cave.

  Elspeth wasted no time in scampering up the side of the cliff, clawing at the dry dirt as the torcano continued its violent pursuit, closing in with incredible speed.

  “Hurry!” implored the tiny man. Of course she was hurrying, but with every two steps up, she slid back another on the steep and crumbly surface.

  Finally, she lunged forward and, with the fingertips of her right hand, took hold of a small ledge jutting out from the floor of the cave. She managed to get her left hand upon the ledge as well but was still unable to pull herself up. The man tried to help by taking hold of her sleeve and tugging with all the might contained within his tiny frame. The small rocks that whizzed past Elspeth’s head were like boulders to the man, yet he did not flee. Instead, he dug in and pulled harder.

  Another smoldering rock zipped by Elspeth’s ear as the torcano moved to within a hundred feet. She ground her toes into the side of the cliff. “Come on!” groaned the miniature man, his fancy shirt and hat by now soaked with perspiration. Another rock bounced off the back of Elspeth’s hand with a searing pain and an unpleasant sizzle, yet she managed to keep her grip on the ledge. With her arms, she pulled harder. With her legs she pushed more forcefully until finally she was able to swing one knee and then the other up onto the protruding rock.

  With the sound of thunder, the torcano swept across the opening to the cave just as the terrified girl and the man crawled frantically inside. As it passed, small rocks and showers of sparks flew into the cave. Elspeth and the man shielded their eyes and held their breath as the torcano moved beyond the cave opening and continued its menacing path down the side of the cliff. When the racket had faded and the dust had settled, the man stood up and wiped the ash from his eyes, unaware at that moment that one of the sparks had done him the extreme dishonor of lighting his pants on fire.

  “That was the worst torcano I’ve ever seen,” said the man.

  “Your pants are on fire,” said Elspeth.

  “Oh, no lie,” the man insisted. “That was a bad one.”

  “No, I mean your pants are literally on fire!”

  The man let go with a squeaky scream and began running around the tiny cave while swatting furiously at his silk-covered backside. Elspeth reached out with her right hand and smacked the man to the ground then took a handful of dirt and threw it on him, dousing the flames.

  It took several moments for the man to regain his breath, and when he did, he sat up and looked at Elspeth. “Thank you,” he said. “I must say, unfortunate circumstances aside, it’s nice to finally meet you. In fact, I was beginning to think you’d never come.”

  “What are you talking about?” Elspeth said, coughing up some dust with a dry hack. “Who are you?”

  “Why, I am the king,” said the man as he wiped a layer of ash from his charred pants seat. “Welcome to my castle away from home, as it were.”

  “You’re King Krool?” asked Elspeth.

  “King Krool?” the man scoffed. “I should hope not, that no-good phony. I am the real king, William the Umpteenth.” He held out his right hand, which featured a ruby ring on the index finger. Though Elspeth couldn’t be sure, she got that feeling that the man fully expected her to kiss the ring. She did not. Instead, she laughed.

  “William the Umpteenth?”

  “Yes,” said the man, rather defensively. “The Winkie family has ruled this land for so long, we’ve more of less lost track of exact numbers.”

  “Winkie family? Wait. William Winkie?”

  “King William, if you don’t mind.”

  “You’re Wee Willie Winkie?”

  The man clenched his teeth and both fists. He may have been clenching other parts of his body as well, but those were the only ones visible. “Arrggghh,” he growled. “I hate that name. It makes me sound ridiculous. Blast that Krool and his horrible lies.” The man stomped at the dirt and threw a punch at an invisible target.

  “I don’t remember reading anything about you being king,” Elspeth said suspiciously.

  “Sure you do,” Winkie insisted. “Good King William, runs through the town, fleeing from those who would take his crown?”

  “Nope,” said Elspeth. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

  Unfazed, Winkie continued. “Who let them in without a knock? Why is the drawbridge open when it’s past ten o’clock?”

  Elspeth shook her head. “Hmm, no. In the version I remember you were just running around putting everyone to sleep. You know, Wee Willie Winkie runs through the town, upstairs and downstairs in his nightgown.”

  “Nonsense,” said Winkie. “I readily admit I may not be the most dynamic public speaker, but I don’t believe I’ve ever put anyone to sleep. In fact, I think I’m an excellent conversationalist. Or at least I used to be. I’m a bit out of practice. It’s been quite lonely here, as you might imagine.”

  “Isn’t there a Mrs. Winkie you can talk to?” asked Elspeth.

  Winkie sighed. “Alas, no,” he said. “And not for lack of trying on my part—you can be sure of that. However, it seems that women prefer a somewhat taller gentleman. Not to mention one with a bit more up top.” He rem
oved his hat and ran his right hand over the smooth shiny surface of his hairless head.

  “If it’s someone to talk to you’re looking for, why don’t you move to the suburbs?” asked Elspeth. “There are hundreds of people to talk to out there.”

  “As much as I’d like to,” said Winkie, “I’m afraid it would put everyone in great danger. You see, Krool wants me dead, for reasons I’m sure you can imagine. As I live, so does the prophecy.”

  There it was again. That word. “What did you mean before?” Elspeth asked. “When you said you thought I’d never come?”

  As he repositioned his hat upon his bald skull, the sadness instantly left his face, replaced by a sly grin. He leaned in like someone about to tell an off-color joke and said, “I know who you are. You’re Elspeth Pule.”

  Of all the things Elspeth had thus far encountered, including talking sticks, bushes, and rocks, this was the one that confounded her most. “Where did you hear that?” she said. “I haven’t told anyone my name since I got here.”

  “For many years I’ve waited,” said William, becoming giddier by the second. “I’d almost given up hope that you’d find me, but here you are.”

  “I didn’t find you,” said Elspeth. “You found me, remember?”

  “A mere technicality,” said the wee former king. “Regardless, there’s no doubt that you are the one.”

  “The one what?”

  “The one about whom it is written, of course. The great warrior who will come and vanquish the evil Krool, and restore me to my rightful place upon the throne.”

  Winkie, Winkie, little tsar,

  How Krool wonders where you are.

  Sitting in his castle high,

  Feasting on a blackbird pie.

  Winkie, Winkie, little tsar,

  How Krool wonders where you are.

  Chapter 9

  Either King William had always been this way, or years of living in exile, holed up in a dark cave on the edge of Torcano Alley, had made him a complete nut case. He paced about the dimly lit cavern, waving his hands and talking a mile a minute while his eyes darted about in their sockets like two flies trapped in a mason jar.