Mulrox spat in his hand and stuck it out toward her.
“I accept.”
7
When Mulrox returned to his room, Geraldine was waiting for him. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to; her eyes were practically bulging out of her head. She hopped to the side, revealing the purple notebook and nosed it forward.
“Geraldine…”
The toad shook her head.
“I don’t know what came over me. I…”
He was doomed. There was only a week until the Behemoth.
He picked up the notebook from the ground and held it to him. There might be something. He flipped through the pages, running his eyes over the words in hope of something, anything that might work. With each page, the thud behind his eyes grew louder and his fingers shook more.
Mulrox snapped the notebook shut. There was nothing here. His poetry was awful. All those dreams seemed utterly ridiculous now. Even if he found the courage to enter, he would surely lose, be laughed off the stage, exposed once and for all as the misfit he truly was. He pictured it, him up on the stage, his voice a barely audible rasp, the paper slipping from his sweaty palms, Griselda and the rest of the audience cackling away. They were right about him; he had nothing to offer. His parents wouldn’t be here to protect him this time. He and Geraldine would be packed off to Raggok, abandoning the home to the machinations of Griselda. If this was the squirrelmonk’s curse, it was fast acting.
He needed help.
Mulrox lay down on his bed and closed his eyes. He felt a thud and a warm presence next to his shoulder as Geraldine curled up next to him.
At least he would have the night to himself. After nearly cackling herself into a coma, Griselda had gone back to the Proggrog, promising not to return until early the next morning.
“I’ll let you get to work. You probably want to polish up your best material,” she had called on her way out.
He tried to picture the ocean. The great blue expanse that linked him to his parents. He saw the waves, smooth as silk, slip and slither, saw them break up and roil in great spurts of foam. He pictured his parents standing out on another shore, thinking of him.
But even this couldn’t calm him. His mind kept dragging him back to the cramped room and his desperate situation. It wasn’t the mill or the move that worried him. He had lived for years working at something he didn’t understand or care about. And with Geraldine, any place would be home. It was the last bit—no poetry—that had the sweat running down the backs of his knees. He didn’t know what he would do without it.
To Mulrox, poetry was not fragile. It wasn’t the essence of language or a statement or a claim to immortality. Not the heartbeat of the ogres, nor a unifying force. It wasn’t a map, a puzzle, a question, or an answer. No, to Mulrox, poetry was the only door in a dark sealed chamber; the outline of hope for a better day and a better self.
Mulrox looked down at the sleeping toad next to him and stroked the top of her head with one finger, recognizing each bump and divot from her eye ridge to the nape of her neck. He closed his eyes.
“It won’t be so bad,” he whispered. “No more Groxor, no more squirrelmonks, and best of all, no more bad ideas.”
* * *
Mulrox was having the dream again. He was in the garden and there was the tornado of purple light. He was staring into it, listening to its faint drone, but something felt different. It wanted something.
Mulrox leaned in and the murmuring grew louder. He took a step closer. Was it speaking? He reached out and touched the column of purple light.
The garden faded. Mulrox was standing on a stage in front of a crowd of ogres. His arms and legs tingled with a warm glow like he was floating. In front of him was Svenn. He was on the stage with Mulrox, handing him something… a medal.
“It’s not possible,” Mulrox said.
The crowd cheered.
“Believe,” a voice said.
Mulrox stumbled backward. That wasn’t Svenn. What had spoken to him?
The image faded and Mulrox was standing in the garden again, his hand in the column of light.
“Not alone.”
The voice again. It was coming from the glowing tornado.
“What are you?” Mulrox asked, peering into the twisting purple glow.
A pulse flickered across its surface. “They’re coming,” it said, and the sky above began to darken.
“Who’s coming?” Mulrox asked.
The garden went dark again, and Mulrox found himself standing in the gloom of a forest. Everything was brown and green. Ferns and bracken filled every spare space between the enormous trees. There was light up ahead—he could see open space through the trees. He was at the edge of the wood. He moved toward it, and something small and gray darted between the tree trunks. And another something slinking behind. Mulrox didn’t know what they were, but there were nearly two dozen of them now, flickering in the moon light. He followed them, pushing through the trees. He was standing at the bottom of a hill, looking up at dilapidated, turnip-shaped hut with twelve chimneys and a blue door. It was his hut.
Sweat burst out along the back of his neck.
“What’s happening?”
The scene faded again into a swirling purple mist, and his hut was gone. He was back in the garden with the light. It reminded him of the pictures of galaxies he had seen, swirling slowly toward infinity.
“Mulrox,” it said. But its voice was scratchy now, as if coming from a long distance. The flowers and trees wavered and began to fade.
“What do I do?” he asked.
The vortex said something else, but there was a crash followed by a series of tinkling sounds as though something had shattered. He was surrounded by purple mist—what could break here? Was there someone in his house? The mist faded into darkness.
Something nudged him in the head. Mulrox’s eyes flew open. Geraldine’s face hovered an inch above his own, her golden eyes staring down into his.
“Geraldine, what are you doing? You won’t believe—”
She slapped him with her tongue.
“Hey—” But he heard it too. The unmistakable sound of something being dragged across the ground.
Something was in his hut.
8
Mulrox crept toward his living room, a candle in one hand and an otter-shaped hat rack in the other. He cursed himself for not keeping his smashing club under his bed like a normal ogre.
“Hello?” he called.
There was no response.
He was gripping the otter so hard his hand was starting to go numb. It might not be a burglar; it could be a racoon or some other lost creature. It might even be something good. That was possible. The squirrelmonk had said someone was coming to help him.
Geraldine appeared at his foot with a throaty growl. Mulrox stepped into the living room and swung the candle about. He saw his filthy floors, his bookshelves. There was movement off to the side. Mulrox whirled around, poker at the ready… and stopped. It was his long burlap curtains swaying in the wind. The living room window was open. He hadn’t left it like that—he was sure.
“Mulrox, is that you?” an unfamiliar voice called from the dark. Each word held a lilting, almost-crazed swing to it, an excited pitch up and back down. As though there were a hidden joke in the words waiting to tumble out.
“Who are you?”
“An interesting question, but I did ask you first.”
He needed more light; he couldn’t see anything with this measly candle.
Mulrox pressed his back to the wall and crept toward the darkened sconces. Without taking his eyes from the other side of the room, he bent over and lit the oil. The room flared to light.
“It is you!” the voice called. “How spectacular.”
Mulrox’s head shot up toward the voice, but there was nothing unusual in the room, just dust and books and old furniture. Where was it hiding?
He stood up, trying to control the trembling that was spreading down through
his legs. “Where are you? Show yourself.”
“Gladly.”
Mulrox’s head spun like an owl, but still he saw nothing unusual.
“Down here,” the voice called again.
He looked down, and the poker dropped from his fingers.
The chalk dust was moving. And not in a swirling, misty sort of way. It was crawling! Dozens of unique shapes crawling over each other, floating just off the ground, and spreading throughout his living room. Mulrox scrambled away from the dust until his back was up against the wall. Geraldine made a strangled gulp and bounded across the floor, wedging herself under her toadstool steps.
They were creatures of some sort, all roughly hewn as though they had been molded from clay by a not-so-talented hand. Though they varied in size, most weren’t much bigger than a potato, but that didn’t make them any less terrifying. There were dozens of them, and they had taken over his living room. Over by his bookshelf floated something that looked like a beach blanket with warts; under the chair was a blob of chalk dust that resembled a toad, but where its legs should have been were four coiled springs. On his table floated a cloud of translucent-looking locusts, a miniature tree whose trunk was supported by two frog legs, and next to them an ominous bell. There were ones with two, four, even eight legs. A couple had no legs at all and slithered through the air as effortlessly as though moving through water. While the majority were the dull, grainy white of the chalk dust, others were made of darker, shinier substances, and others were almost completely transparent.
Mulrox took a deep breath. This had to be another one of his crazy dreams. He was becoming delusional. Perhaps he should go to Raggok after all. He was clearly losing his mind.
Out from behind the blackboard floated another one of these monsters. It was sparkly blue. As it floated toward Mulrox, it changed from a rectangle to a pumpkin, to a puddle, to a web, to a wheel, and back to an unrecognizable blob. Mulrox did his best not to flinch.
“Who—what are you?” he said.
Though it had no obvious face, Mulrox got the distinct impression the thing was smiling.
“I am Yvwi.” It was the voice he had heard earlier.
“Yiv-wee?”
“Close enough. And we,” Yvwi waved around, “are malcognitos.” He spoke every word with an almost rabid cheerfulness. Mulrox didn’t know whether the creature was making fun of him or found everything so amusing that each word left him on the verge of hysterics. “Surely you’ve been expecting us.”
Mulrox squinted at Yvwi. The malcognito had taken on the shape of a teapot.
Mulrox took in the other creatures scattered about the room. These had to be the helpers the squirrelmonk had mentioned. They were definitely not what he had expected, but nothing ever went to plan for him.
“So how does this work?” Mulrox asked. “How do we get started?”
“Cuts to the chase, doesn’t he? Wonderful. I knew we had come to the right place.” There was a murmuring throughout the room as the creatures all wriggled and hummed in agreement.
“Here,” Mulrox said. He rushed over and righted the toppled blackboard. He hunted the ground until he found a piece of intact chalk and held it out to Yvwi. The teapot’s spout widened and it took the chalk and floated toward the board.
And then Yvwi was changing shape again, spout and handle collapsing into a many-legged sun star. The sea creature broke the chalk into pieces, distributing it among his legs. He turned to the board in a flurry of dust. “Yes! Here—no, here.” Mulrox held his breath—if Yvwi could write a poem that fast, perhaps the malcognitos were exactly what Mulrox needed. “And then up here, over there, through this, over that, and then here. I think that should do.”
Yvwi floated away from the board, revealing his work.
“It’s…” Mulrox’s words failed him.
“Actually quite amazing, I know. I’ve always wanted to do that.”
It was an unintelligible mess of squiggles. There were lines and Xs and circles all overlapping in a giant meaningless soup.
“I think the plan should be fairly obvious from here.”
Mulrox stared at the heap of squiggles.
“Well, if I have to spell it out for you—first, we head back into the woods, then we wander along the river, blah blah blah, we’re there. It’s really a short journey. It should be quite easy to make it back to Sounous—”
“Wait. The woods? What are you talking about? I’m not going anywhere. I have to win the Behemoth.”
“Do you perhaps mean, beat, obliterate, destroy? You don’t really win a monster.”
“It’s not a monster—it’s a competition.”
“If you say so. Gather whatever you need, and we will be on our way. I’m not sure how much time we have, but I’d bet not much.”
Mulrox rubbed the back of his neck. “How is any of this going to help me get my house back?”
“Is this not your house? Whose house are we in? You could have mentioned that earlier.”
“My house. The deal with Griselda. The squirrelmonk curse.”
“This all sounds fascinating.”
“So you’re not here to help me win the talent competition?”
“Nope.”
“You don’t know anything about poetry or inspiration? You are just some weird, faceless blobs that broke into my living room.”
“I wouldn’t say that. I mean, yes, we broke into your living room, and our faces are on the blobby side, but we’re malcognitos. There’s enough inspiration in this room to win a hundred competitions. Though I’m not sure why you need help. You’re the one who created us.”
“I did?” They weren’t the most attractive creatures, but if he had really created them, that was surely something.
Yvwi floated up to his face. “Of course I’m sure. We’re malcognitos. How else could we have been created?”
“What exactly is a malcognito?” Mulrox extended his hand. Yvwi, back in the shape of a teapot, settled awkwardly on Mulrox’s palm.
“You don’t know?” Yvwi straightened and puffed up his teapot chest. “We are terrible ideas, of course.”
“WHAT?!”
Mulrox jerked so hard that he launched Yvwi several feet up into the air. The malcognito recovered and floated back down to eye level.
“What a reception! Very dramatic.”
“I have enough bad ideas—I don’t need anymore. Please.” Mulrox stood up and tried to push Yvwi toward the open window. “You can’t be seen here.”
“Mulrox.” Yvwi easily avoided his outstretched arms. “You don’t understand. We’re not just any horrible ideas. We are your horrible ideas.”
Mulrox looked around the room; there were scores of the things.
“All of you?”
“You’ve been busy,” Yvwi said, delighted.
The room was crowded with the twisted, faceless creatures. “No! Sorry. No way.”
“Don’t you recognize us?” Yvwi said. “That beauty over there is Tree-with-frog-legs. You created him last night. And over there is Rock-like-skin.” He was pointing toward the warty carpet.
“What about Cloud-of-locusts? Dinner-bell-of-destruction? Don’t forget Death-with-a-kiss. You did wonders with her.”
A particularly menacing-looking malcognito rattled its legs at him through what looked like a long, fluttering cloak. Where its eyes should have been were two large Xs and below that a pair of puckered lips.
“And then there’s me.”
Mulrox looked at Yvwi and shook his head.
“What? Come now, you know who I am. Think about it. You and I go back a very long time.” Mulrox squinted at him but said nothing. The malcognito sighed. “I’m Your-very-worst-idea. But I don’t stand on ceremony; Yvwi is fine.”
Mulrox shuddered.
“That’s right,” Yvwi said.
He couldn’t have his horrible ideas floating all over Ulgorprog. This couldn’t be happening. Not now.
“Please,” Mulrox said. “Please leave.”
>
“We can’t do that. We’ll write you a million poems. I’ve got some ideas brewing, something about wet sock mash or fingernail clippings.”
From across the room, Mulrox watched as a malcognito flew straight into a lamp, slamming it off the side table and sending it crashing to the floor. The wooden base cracked in half on impact.
“Hey!” Mulrox yelled.
The malcognito waved an angry arm at Yvwi and then Mulrox.
“Right! I digress! As Death-with-a-kiss was so kind to remind me, we actually came for something else. A favor actually. We require your assistance. We’re in a bit of a pickle.”
“You want my help? Why?”
“Because we are in danger,” Yvwi said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “There is something very wrong in Sounous. Something is after us. Malcognitos are disappearing left and right. There’s no warning. One day they’re here, the next gone. And not a word.”
Mulrox looked around the room at the dozens of strange creatures. Though they had no visible eyes, it seemed they were all staring at him.
“I…”
“It will be easy. You’ll travel with us to Sounous, find out what’s after us, and then defeat it. We’ll be back in time for your monster mixer or whatever it was.”
Mulrox shook his head. What was he thinking? “Look, you don’t want me. Even if I could help, it’d just be a disaster. There are plenty of proper ogres in Ulgorprog. I’m sure they’d be happy to take care of your issue for you. Trust me, I’m no use to anyone.”
“But you have to.”
Something caught Mulrox’s attention. Geraldine had abandoned her position under her stepping stool and was sitting behind a clump of malcognitos with a hypnotized intensity he knew all too well.
“You might want to—” Mulrox began.
But before he could finish the thought, Geraldine’s tongue shot out, wrapped around the nearest malcognito, and snapped the dusty prize back into her mouth.
“Geraldine!” Mulrox shrieked. Who knew the damage the malcognito might do to her insides. “Spit it out!”
Mulrox and the Malcognitos Page 5