Here be Monsters

by Christopher Stasheff

  The roar came again and a huge dead branch came crashing down a yard from Alain’s horse. The stallion surged against the bit, but Alain held him and asked, “Have you not sent to your lord for help?”

  “He would not believe his old flatterer would do ill,” the man said bitterly, “and our friar sought to exorcise the monster, but the bull was too strong for him. It roared to drown out his words, then chased him into the church.”

  “We have had enough,” the woman said, “more than enough, all we can take. We would flee the village outright, but Brother Anselm persuaded us to try one last measure.”

  “We have asked friars from eleven other villages to come and help put down the ghost for good.” The husband nodded toward the lights below. “There they walk, each carrying a lighted candle, and we can hear their chorus of prayers in spite of all the bull’s roaring.”

  “A most worthy undertaking!” Alain exchanged glances with Geoffrey, who grinned back and said, “And a most courageous! I would see the outcome.”

  “I too,” Gregory agreed. “If there is anything I do not know about laying to rest a ghost, I will most eagerly learn it—and who knows? The dozen friars may yet need our aid.”

  “Thanks for the warning, good people,” Alain said to the family, “but I believe we will ride into this danger nonetheless.”

  They could still hear the family groaning with fear when they were twenty feet away and picking up speed.

  As they rode into the common, they saw that the half-circle had tightened, managing to ring the bull completely on three sides—and behind it rose the church. The bull towered over them, ten feet tall at least, bellowing and roaring and pawing the earth. Now and again it charged a friar, but all held their places in the circle with dogged determination, candles high as they chanted their prayers loudly and stepped forward, slowly but with great resolution. The bull turned from one to another, about and about, still making its hideous noise, confused and enraged as the circle tightened around him.

  “They push him toward the graveyard!” Geoffrey said.

  “Of course—it is the place of the dead!” Gregory cried. “But surely so wicked a spirit may not step on consecrated ground without pain or danger of destruction!”

  Nonetheless, the bull turned toward the cemetery—but froze as it saw the dim, translucent forms rising from the ground and gathering shoulder to shoulder to form a wall.

  “The ghosts of those he cheated and despoiled!” Gregory breathed. “It is ghost against ghost now, and they have the strength of Right to brace them.”

  “And of numbers,” Geoffrey agreed. “Surely the bull cannot venture into the graveyard now.”

  “True,” Alain said, puzzled. “It cannot go backward, and it cannot go forward for fear of the prayers and the blessed light of the candles. How then do they mean to chase it away?”

  “I do not think they do,” said Geoffrey grimly. “I think they mean to lay it to rest once and for all.”

  “To force it to lie in its coffin and never come out?” Alain asked, amazed.

  “Something of the sort,” Gregory said, studying the friars and their roaring foe. “Let us see what they do.”

  Tighter and tighter the circle became, surrounding the bull in a corral of lights. Its bellows stormed and threatened, but still the ring closed in on it. At last, with an earthshaking roar, the bull bolted toward the church door.

  “It cannot go in!” Alain protested. “Not into a consecrated place!”

  “It is the church, or the ghosts whose yearning for revenge burns white-hot,” Gregory explained. “Which will hurt it more?”

  “The frying pan or the fire?” Geoffrey muttered.

  The church shook with the bull’s shout of agony, a long roll of sound that combined anger and pain so deeply that all three men shuddered. Even Geoffrey felt fear of that horrendous creature, but the friars strode with determination into the chapel.

  “I must be there!” Gregory cried. “Who knows what the beast will do when it is cornered?”

  “Nay,” Geoffrey cried, “that is why you must not—”

  Gregory disappeared with a small thundercrack.

  “Oh, blast! What peril has he sent himself into this time?” Geoffrey turned to Alain. “Follow when you can!” And with another thundercrack he, too, disappeared, leaving Alain to decorate the evening air with some curses that any well-bred prince should not have known.

  Gregory appeared inside the church with a thundercrack that was drowned out by the bull’s most agonized roar. There were no pews, as in most medieval churches, so the floor was one wide expanse of flagstone with the bull in its center and two lines of friars striding with determination along the walls toward the altar, to protect the side and rear walls while a third spread out to block the doorway. They held their candles high and filled the church with the sound of prayer, somehow louder even than the bull’s cries of pain and fury. It turned about and about, charging first one friar, then another, always repelled by the prayers. Finally it realized they were about to close the circle around it and charged the eastern wall, head down, horns stabbing out. It slammed headlong into the stone, rebounded, and wobbled back to the center, reeling and dizzy.

  “It has cracked solid granite!”

  Gregory looked up to see his brother beside him, pointing. His arrival, too, had been drowned out by the chanting and the bellowing. “Cracked, but not broken,” he said. “This is a hallowed building, after all. It may hurt the bull sorely, but its wall is proof against the strength of his wickedness.”

  “And is stronger than he, it seems!” Geoffrey pointed. “See! It shrinks!”

  Gregory looked, and sure enough, the bull was growing smaller. It must have realized its peril, though, for it sucked in a huge quantity of air, puffing itself up as well as it could.

  Suddenly Gregory realized the bull’s intent. “Beware!” he called to the friars. “The ghost means to—”

  The bull let out all the air in one vast bellow, spinning as it did to sweep its breath over every single candle. The wave of frigid air snuffed out each one of the little lights. In the darkness, the friars cried out in consternation and the bull bellowed in triumph.

  “Excite molecules!” Gregory snapped at his brother and stared into the darkness, visualizing tiny lights piercing its gloom.

  “The very thing!” Geoffrey cried, and did the same.

  One by one, the tiny flames rekindled, casting their glows over the faces of the friars. With joy, the clergymen began to chant again, and the bull bellowed in outrage—but his bellow slid up the scale, higher and higher as the friars stepped closer and closer. They were near enough now so that their candles illuminated the bull from every side, showing his shrinking; their horseshoe had finally become a ring, tightening around the monster as it grew smaller and smaller. The hymn rose up in joy and triumph as the creature dwindled, its baffled bellowing becoming a bleating, then a trilling, and finally a squeaking.

  “Now, Brother Hendrik!” a friar cried, and one of his fellows stepped forward with a tinder box. He scooped up the tiny creature and snapped the lid shut.

  Gregory and Geoffrey shouted with triumph. Another voice joined them; turning in surprise, they saw Alain standing near the door, cheering as lustily as they.

  But the friars did not cheer, only sang a hymn of thanks to the Deity who had vanquished their enemy. Their song soared and ended, and the church lay silent a moment, its stone walls gilded by the light of the candle flames.

  Then a squeaking came from the tinder box, a cricket chirp that formed itself into words: “What will you do with me? Have mercy, I pray!”

  “What mercy did you show to those who came within your power?” a friar demanded.

  “You shall be served even as you served your fellows,” another friar agreed.

  “Do me this much, at least!” the tiny voice implored. “Bury this box under the bridge across the village stream, that I may be not completely alone!”

  �
�Nay, fellow,” the oldest friar said sternly. “We know the malice in your heart.”

  “And the powers even a tiny ghost may have,” another graying friar agreed. “Most likely you would make every pregnant woman who crossed that bridge miscarry.”

  “Aye, and every cow and ewe, too,” a third friar added.

  The tinder box issued a frenzy of chirping that modulated into words. “A curse upon you for your suspicious minds!”

  “If he would curse us, then we were right in our guessing his mischief,” the oldest friar said with a grim smile. “Nay, villain, we shall wrap this box in lead and send it to the seacoast for a fisherman to take and sink as many fathoms deep as he can.”

  “Think of charity!” the box squeaked. “Would you doom me to eternity within this cramped and lightless space?”

  “If it is not to your liking, you may go to the Afterworld and the reward your cruelty has earned you.”

  “Cruel as you, if you would doom me to damnation! You know that hellfire awaits me!”

  “It is the fate you have chosen for yourself,” the friar said severely, “by your mistreatment of your fellows while you lived.”

  Gregory stepped forward, one hand raised. “If I may intrude, holy brothers?”

  The friars look up, startled. Then the oldest friar said slowly, “I wondered how our candles relit themselves. Well, if it is you who made them glow to life again, speak, for you have earned some voice in this matter, stranger or not.”

  “I thank you, men of grace.” Gregory stared at the box, fascinated. “Might you not sing the bull down smaller still, say to the size of a gnat, so that to him, his chamber is as spacious as a palace?”

  The friars exchanged a look of surprise. “Aye,” the eldest said slowly, “in charity’s name, we might do that much.”

  “But to never again see light!” the box squeaked.

  “Do not believe him,” Gregory advised. “He is a ghost, after all, and can lighten his palace with his own glow.”

  “Curse you for knowing that!” the box squeaked.

  “What,” the friar cried, scandalized, “would you curse him who even now spoke up for you, who thought to make you so small that your chamber would seem a cavern? Nay, you are not worthy of such kindness after all!”

  “No, no!” the bull squeaked. “I spoke rashly, I spoke in error! Nay, I revoke all curses I have laid! Only sing me smaller, men of virtue!”

  “Would it were something other than force that could induce his remorse,” the friar sighed, “but we can afford a morsel of charity after all. Brothers, let us sing.”

  Alain, Geoffrey, and Gregory left the church as they began. They paused a moment on the common to look back at the chapel, listening to the harmonies rising within.

  “To look at it now, one would think only of peace and calm,” Alain marveled.

  “Aye,” Geoffrey agreed. “Who could know of the cruelty and depth of malice of the creature, or the determination and courage it took to quell it?”

  “It is enough that we know, and that harmony is restored to this village.” Gregory looked up at the sky in wonder. “This has taken far longer than it seemed, friends. Dawn lightens the sky.”

  “Why, so it does,” Alain said, astonished, then turned to mount his horse. “Somehow I have no great desire to sleep in this village, day or night. Since there will be light to show us our way, let us ride on a few miles more and pitch camp in some meadow.”

  “A good thought.” Geoffrey swung up astride his stallion. “Still, I cannot be sorry that we pressed on through darkness last night.”

  “Nor I,” Gregory admitted. He set his foot in the stirrup and mounted. “Come, gentlemen, let us ride, for we can surely find a more secure place of rest than this.”

  Nonetheless, as they rode over the log bridge toward the forest, Geoffrey turned to his brother with a frown. “What are you smiling about now, Watchman?”

  “Only thinking that word travels, and the friars have no reason to keep the events of this night secret,” Gregory answered. “I doubt not that the folk of this village will be very cautious about crossing this bridge for some years to come.”

  “Have you any biscuit left, Cordelia?” Quicksilver asked. “Mine is gone, and I’ve only a few strips of jerky left.”

  “I’ve four biscuits but no dried beef.” Cordelia handed hardtack to each of the women. “We shall keep one in reserve.”

  Hunger gnawed at Allouette’s stomach—indeed, it growled at her in anger as she passed the biscuit back to Cordelia. “I thank you, damsel, but I can last some while longer. Perchance we shall find some nuts or berries.”

  “Or a rabbit who has tired of life?” Quicksilver asked. “Perhaps I shall hunt when we pitch camp, but skinning and roasting will delay us too long for the sharpness of my hunger.”

  “I shall subsist on the beauty that surrounds us.” Allouette looked around at the trees to either side of the trail. “Surely these are old and venerable trunks! So tall, so massive!”

  “I see some that are neither.” Cordelia nodded toward a coppice, a patch of several dozen oak trees only a little more than a foot across. Then she looked down at the roots. “Why, they are growing from the stumps of trees fallen before them!”

  They looked and saw that each of the young trees had a flat plane of wood beneath it, some only a foot high, some two feet—but eighteen inches wide or more, and each grew from the center of a three-foot-wide stump. Almost every one had another, smaller stump that had grown out of the side.

  “Why, the oaks of this coppice have been cut three times!” Cordelia exclaimed. “These trees are the fourth generation!”

  Allouette shivered. “There is something uncanny about this place, something weird, as though it waits to trap the unwary.”

  “Well might it hold a grudge against humankind, if each of its oaks has been chopped down three times!” Cordelia said with a laugh. “Nonetheless, you cannot deny that it is a pretty place.”

  “Oh yes, it is lovely,” Allouette agreed, “perhaps because these trees spread so much smaller a canopy than the hoary old giants about them. They let more sunlight in—and look! The coppice is filled with bluebells!”

  The small blue flowers did indeed fill the little grove so densely that they almost seemed to be a carpet. Among them the red tops of toadstools thrust up.

  “How strange to see toadstools among flowers,” Cordelia marveled, “and such large ones, too!”

  “They seem almost jolly, almost festive,” Allouette agreed.

  “I wonder if they are good to eat?” Quicksilver pressed a hand over her rumbling stomach.

  As if in answer, one of the toadstools rose upward. The three women gasped as they saw beneath it a gnarled and wrinkled face with a long red nose. Then the toadstool began to walk toward them.

  CHAPTER

  13

  The “toadstool” proved to be no fungus but a man two feet tall and a foot wide, seeming to be mostly torso; his legs and arms were far shorter than most people’s. His hands, though, held a platter of steaming roast beef with carrots and onions around it. “Are you a-hungered, then?” he asked in a rasping, guttural voice. “Nay, come into our coppice and dine!”

  Cordelia inhaled the aroma with a sigh of longing and Allouette’s mouth watered. “How very good of you!” she told the little man.

  “Aye, of all of you.” Quicksilver looked out over the coppice.

  “All? What do you mean?” Allouette asked.

  “Discuss it while we dine!” Cordelia moved her horse forward.

  “Be not so quick.” Quicksilver put out a hand to stop her. “Have you never heard that ‘Fairie folks are in old oaks’?”

  “Aye, but what has that to do with food?” Cordelia looked up at the leaves. “Truly, these trees are oaks, but what meaning is there in that?”

  “It means that each of those ‘toadstools’ is truly the cap of one of the Wee Folk who haunt this grove,” Quicksilver told her, “of one of the Oa
kmen.”

  Somehow the name sent a chill of apprehension through Cordelia and Allouette. “Is there truth in this?” Cordelia asked the little man.

  He grinned, but it looked forced. “Even so! Meet all of your hosts!”

  The red toadstools rose, and sure enough, each was the hat of a gnome with a long red nose, blue tunic, and tawny leggins. “Come in and dine!” they all cried in chorus.

  “They have a most remarkable unity of opinion.” Allouette’s apprehension deepened.

  “They also have food! Would you insult their hospitality?”

  “Do not, we pray,” said the Oakman. “See what other dishes we offer!”

  Each of the Oakmen raised his arms, holding out a platter. Some had roast chicken with dressing, others a medley of steaming vegetables, others bowls of fresh fruit, some even candied sweets.

  “Do not soldiers always dine when they can, for fear their next meal may be long in coming?” Cordelia asked Quicksilver.

  “Only when they can trust the food,” the warrior answered.

  That gave Cordelia pause. “Oh . . . the tales I have heard of faerie food . . .”

  Allouette’s head snapped up, staring; everyone knew that if you ate the food of faerie folk, you placed yourself in their power. She had never realized how strongly those dishes might tempt a person to forget that.

  “Slander, surely!” said the little man. “We are generous, that is all!”

  “And very careful to guard your forest, from all I’ve heard.” Quicksilver turned to her companions. “As I grew up, I was constantly in the greenwood exploring and gathering, damsels.”

  “And hunting,” the Oakman snapped.