“What are you doing?” Mulrox called after her.
“Going after Groxor.”
“You can’t do that.”
“I’m not going to leave him out there. Do you think there is any way he could fend for himself?” she asked.
Mulrox didn’t say anything.
“I didn’t think so. We will be fine.”
“We?” Mulrox said and cast his eyes to that small, dark figure. “No!” he said, racing after them now. “No way. Geraldine stays here.”
“Geraldine is a toad of fine sensibilities. She can do as she pleases,” Yahgurkin responded.
“Come on, Geraldine. You hate it outside,” he pleaded.
Geraldine kept hopping after Yahgurkin. She didn’t turn back.
“Yahgurkin, look. There’s more going on here. I’ll go after Groxor, I promise, but you two stay here.”
“You’ll never make it,” Yahgurkin called back over her shoulder. “Has to be me.”
Mulrox had stopped halfway down the hill, but the ogress and the toad were nearly to the trees.
It was then that he felt the ground begin to shake. His stomach tightened. Yvwi emerged out of the darkness and hovered by his side.
“Do you feel that?” Mulrox whispered.
Yvwi nodded.
Mulrox could make out the first tufts of white advancing down the road.
“What do we do?” Mulrox asked, trying to keep the waver from his voice.
“We run,” Yvwi said.
So Mulrox ran. His club and water jug clanged against each other as they bounced on the outside of his pack. He felt like he might be thrown off balance a couple times, but he didn’t stop until he reached the trees.
Mulrox hesitated for a moment at the edge of the woods, the smell of pine and rot already wafting around him. Nothing good could come from this dark place.
“What are you doing?” Yvwi said. “Come on.”
Mulrox looked over his shoulder up at the hill. He could hear the bleating now, heavy in the air. And there at the top of the hill was the first of the sheep. Mulrox wanted to run, but he felt transfixed.
A single sheep lifted up on its back hooves and then battered his door.
“WHAT WAS THAT?” a voice full of gravel and malice bellowed.
“Griselda,” Mulrox whispered.
Again.
He felt the words inside his brain. It was here too: the grinder.
The sheep kicked the door again, and he heard the sound of wood splintering. A moment later, a bloodcurdling roar rolled out from inside his hut. He saw the lead sheep fly backward and slam into the others.
“Let’s go,” Yvwi said.
Griselda was more than capable, but still, it didn’t feel right to leave her under attack.
“They are after you, not her,” Yvwi said. “They’ll realize you’re not there soon enough.”
Something slammed into his back. It was Death-with-a-kiss. Tree-with-frog-legs was there too, pulling Mulrox forward by the front of his shirt. It was enough to uproot him.
His legs began to move and Mulrox tore off into the waiting branches of the wood, a cloud of troubled malcognitos not far behind.
13
It was so dark under the trees that Mulrox could see only a few feet ahead of him. He stumbled forward. Coils of vines snatched at his legs, and branches sliced at his face and arms.
“Yvwi, where’s Yahgurkin? Do you see them?”
“I imagine they followed the path.”
It seemed to Mulrox they had never been farther from civilization, but he looked down anyway. It took a few moments for his eyes to adjust to the pale moonlight that filtered down from the treetops, but he could now make out a dusty but well-defined path.
“I guess we follow then,” Mulrox said.
Clusters of densely needled trees pushed in all around him, filling the air with their sharp, spicy smell. Mulrox pushed forward, uncomfortably aware of the noises he made, branches rustling, twigs snapping. He followed the footpath, slipping down the hillside until it petered out on level ground. Before him now was a wide trail, extending left and right as far as he could see.
“Mulrox! You came!”
There was a thud as something large dropped from above him and landed on the path. It straightened up, and Mulrox could now see Yahgurkin smiling at him, her protruding teeth highlighted by the soft glow of the fungus around her neck. Geraldine hopped out of the shadows and bumped against his leg.
“We think Groxor headed east. Whatever is wrong with him, it’s not making him particularly careful, so he shouldn’t be too hard to find… well, hello there.”
The malcognitos emerged from behind Mulrox and clustered around Yahgurkin. Geraldine leaned harder against Mulrox’s leg, a low, guttural noise escaping her lips.
“Hello, ogress,” Yvwi said.
“Hello there.” She held out a hand to Yvwi, who landed on it settling into the shape of a miniature flamingo. She held him up to eye level. “Wow! You’re amazing!”
“Naturally,” Yvwi said, puffing up his feathers and strutting along her palm.
“So this is what you’ve been hiding!” Yahgurkin said, turning back to Mulrox. “I knew something was up last night. No one ever comes to visit me. What are you? Snagglepods?”
“Not snagglepods. This may come as a bit of a shock to you, but we are—”
“Shh, do you hear that?” Mulrox asked.
There was a sound coming from above. Mulrox hesitated. A chorus of baaing and bleating rolled down the hillside.
“Is that the sheep?” Yahgurkin asked. “The ones looking for you?”
Mulrox nodded.
“But why?”
He had assumed the sheep wouldn’t follow him into the Woods Mercurial, that they would be as afraid of it as he was. But there was nothing natural about those sheep.
“Us,” Yvwi said.
“You’re the criminals!”
Yvwi looked delighted by this, but before he could start in on another monologue, Mulrox cut him off.
“They’re bad ideas. Malcognitos. I’ll explain more later, but we have to go. The sheep must have realized we weren’t there,” Mulrox said. “Trust me, we don’t want them to find us.”
“Malcognitos… incredible.”
“Yahgurkin!” Mulrox reached out and shook her arm. Panic was setting in.
Her eyes flicked down toward him.
“Right,” she said. “What about Groxor?”
“Groxor?” Mulrox couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Forget about Groxor. We need to hide. Maybe those trees over there—” Mulrox started to pull them off the path.
“You want to leave him out here?” She stared at him.
The sheep were growing louder.
“Yahgurkin, can’t you hear them? We have to leave,” Mulrox said.
She dug in her heels. Mulrox dropped her arm. He could leave her, grab Geraldine, and sprint into the trees. But Geraldine would never forgive him. He didn’t like the idea much himself; Groxor was one thing, but as annoying as Yahgurkin was, she didn’t deserve to be mauled by those sheep.
Mulrox took a deep breath. “They’re not after him. He just got in the way while spying on me.”
She looked skeptical.
“They’re not normal sheep. They’re under some kind of enchantment, and there is this horrible creature with them. We can’t let them catch us, any of us.”
“It is a little urgent,” Yvwi said.
Yahgurkin looked behind her toward the sounds of bleating. “I suppose he could be okay for one night,” she said.
“Yes,” Mulrox said.
“Then we can look for him in the morning?” Her face was full of hope.
She had to be the most frustrating ogre Mulrox had ever met.
“Yes, fine. Let’s go.”
“You promise?”
“Yes, I promise. Please.” He gave her arm a hard yank, and this time she came with him.
They made it a good hundred f
eet before Yahgurkin stopped again.
“What now?” Mulrox asked.
“I thought you said you wanted to hide,” she said.
“Yes, that’s the idea.”
“Then why are we going to Gibraltar’s Clearing?”
“What?”
“It’s just ahead. It’s not very good for hiding.”
Mulrox stopped and glared at her. He could no longer hear the sheep, but he didn’t believe for a second that they had stopped looking.
“Do you have a better idea?”
“I do have a hideout not too far from here.”
“A hideout?” Yvwi said. “That sounds promising. Better than being whacked in the face by branches all night.” He glared at Mulrox.
“Can you get there without following the path?” Mulrox said.
“Definitely.”
“And there’s enough space for all of us?”
“And more.”
He didn’t trust Yahgurkin’s judgment on these things; this hideout could be a pit in the ground for all he knew, but he had to admit she understood the forest better than him.
He nodded.
“To the hideout!” Yvwi said.
* * *
Mulrox’s fears had not been unfounded. They had already stopped twice, once to collect from what Yahgurkin deemed an amazing patch of tuberose—” It only blooms for a short window,” she had explained before Mulrox had hurried them along—and another time to point out a rock to Geraldine that Yahgurkin thought looked like a certain toad she knew.
When they stopped for the third time, Mulrox’s patience had worn down to threads. They had been stumbling through the dark for an hour or more.
“It’s through here,” Yahgurkin said, pointing among the bracken. “This way.”
“This better be it,” Mulrox grumbled. “If it’s a fruit the color of Yvwi or—”
“I don’t know, that sounds quite fetching,” Yvwi said.
Mulrox swiped at the malcognito.
They turned left once more, making their way over a snag and then through a patch of many-fingered ferns, where they came to a stop in front of a solid wall of brambles that reached up far above their heads.
“Here?”
“Yes.” Yahgurkin reached down and rolled a log away from the bushes revealing a dark, muddy hole. “Through there,” she said. “You first.”
The malcognitos dove into the hole, followed by an enthusiastic Geraldine. Mulrox frowned but dropped to his hands and knees. He inched his way forward. Mud squelched through his fingers, but a few anxious moments later, he could see a patch of the night sky up ahead, and he was once again above ground. He was standing in a small circular clearing, surrounded by high, thick walls of brambles.
Yahgurkin followed a moment later, her feet arriving first.
“I had to roll the log back in place.” She stood up and wiped the dirt off her palms. “We should be safe here tonight. No one knows about this place except for me and the badger who made it.”
She smiled and then strode to the edge of clearing. There she picked up a dark shape Mulrox had taken for a rock, and with a quick snapping motion, she unfurled a tarp and spread it out along the ground. She settled down on top of it and then motioned for them to join her.
“Oh! I almost forgot.” Yahgurkin reached behind her neck and lifted a necklace of glowing blue fungus. “They’re called foxfire. They luminesce. I brought an extra for you in case you came.” She held out the string of mushrooms to Mulrox. “I suppose it would have been more useful earlier. I just got so excited what with the chase and all.” Mulrox sniffed at it before reluctantly dropping the reeking thing around his neck.
“I like it!” Yvwi said, floating toward them. “You look ridiculous.”
Mulrox waved his hands in front of him. With the blue glow illuminating his movements, he could see much better.
“Thank you,” he forced himself to say. “It helps.”
He settled down on the tarp, and Geraldine curled up into a ball at his side. “You must spend a lot of time here.”
“Some.” She shrugged. As if the mushroom necklaces and secret hideout were nothing of note. “Now tell me everything.”
“It all started when a golden omen fell from the sky and knocked me in the coconut.”
* * *
Between Yahgurkin’s enthusiastic questioning and the ominous sound of hooves that passed outside of their hideout, they got very little sleep. Yahgurkin took in the story of the malcognitos as though there were nothing unusual about it. The Vaccus, the grinder, the portal, the enchanted sheep all fascinated her, but then again, she also found fungus fascinating. Mulrox wondered, not for the first time, how she had become so strange.
“So all we have to do is find the river and the stone bridge, go through the Crow’s Nest Clearing, find the curtain moss place and then a tree that looks like an ogre. Pass through a portal to another dimension and defeat a beast we know nothing about.”
“That’s it,” Yvwi said.
“And be back in time for the Behemoth,” Mulrox added.
“This is exactly how I pictured it.” Yahgurkin sighed and closed her eyes, smiling to herself. “A real adventure.”
Even after Yahgurkin had drifted off to sleep, Mulrox lay wide-eyed, staring up at the night sky. So much had happened.
He fished his notebook from his bag and stared at the blank white page for several minutes before giving up. His mind was a jumble.
It was cold, and the ground was hard and smelled like mud. The wood was full of whispers, as though the whole forest was plotting against him. The branches creaked and groaned, threatening endless possibilities of monsters and beasts from his imagination. And it was dark—darker than he would have imagined possible. Anything could be out there, waiting for him to fall asleep.
He scooched in closer to the others. He had never spent a single night away from the safety of his hut. The thought of it now was almost too much to bear––the dragon huddled around his hearth, the mobile of spinning animals, his writing nook, and the warm nest of blankets that made up his bed. Mulrox sat up and dug a rock out from under his thigh and tossed it a few feet away. He lay back down with a humph. The sheep had broken his door, but he hoped Griselda had stopped them from damaging too much else.
He could hear Geraldine’s snores and the gurgles of the malcognitos next to him. Yahgurkin seemed to be conducting some sort of lecture in her sleep. Her eyelids fluttered and her corkscrew hair was strewn every which way. Despite the bizarre day, she had been surprisingly levelheaded.
Mulrox turned over, putting his back to the rambling purple ogre, as though the action could do more than remove her from his sight. His efforts to distance himself from Yahgurkin had only ever backfired, and now it looked as though he was stuck with his mad, rambling neighbor as a compatriot and guide on this ill-advised mission.
Mulrox closed his eyes.
“You’ll never guess who’s come to dinner,” Yahgurkin mumbled behind him.
Mulrox startled and then grunted when he realized she was deep in some dream.
“Good night, Yahgurkin,” Mulrox whispered.
“Marzipan is the message.”
Mulrox shook his head but couldn’t help but smile.
14
The next morning, Mulrox awoke to a loud crack.
His eyes flew open, and he rolled to a standing position.
A moment later, he spotted Yahgurkin throwing something orange and tube-shaped against a cluster of rocks. He grumbled and sat back down, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.
Yahgurkin raised the thing up over her head again and chucked it as hard as she could against the rock. It bounced once and then soared off across the hideout. Geraldine bounded after it and then rolled it back to Yahgurkin with small nudges of her head.
Mulrox stretched.
“You’re up!” Yahgurkin said, sounding surprised and pleased. “We found breakfast.” She wandered over to him and held up the object she
had been hurling against the rocks moments before. It looked even more revolting under closer inspection. He could now see dozens of thin, branching blue lines that broke up the otherwise florescent-orange skin.
“Great.” Mulrox rubbed his face. He was sore, very sore. It felt like someone had jumped all over his back.
Yahgurkin gave Mulrox a wide smile and then hurled the thing at the rocks once more. This time, there was a tremendous crack, and the thing split down the middle, revealing two soupy-looking halves. Yahgurkin gathered them up into her arms and carried them back to where Mulrox sat.
“Want some?” she asked, holding the fruit under his face. “It’s called a nubler. It’s sort of like a salty, pumpkin-flavored banana, if you get what I mean.”
“With the consistency of snot?”
“Exactly!” she said, smiling. She tipped one-half back and poured a great quantity of the liquid into her mouth.
Mulrox looked away. “That’s okay,” he muttered.
“Good morning, sleepyhead!” Yvwi zoomed out of the bushes and landed in a pile of dust at Mulrox’s feet.
He wasn’t imagining things—Yvwi had grown. His bad idea had expanded from the size of a small orange to that of a sack of flour. “You’re growing.”
“That’s not very polite, but yes, as a matter of fact. We all are.”
He looked around. It was true—all the malcognitos had nearly doubled in size, and their odd shapes were taking on detail. The one called Tree-with-frog-legs appeared to be sprouting leaves out of his branch-like arms.
“How big are you going to get?” Mulrox asked.
“Unclear!” Yvwi said. “We’ve never gotten to spend so much time with you.”
Something bumped Mulrox’s leg, and he looked down to find the one called Toad-springs-eternal. Mulrox tried not to jump away as he pranced about on his spring feet.
“Let’s not make a habit of it,” Mulrox said.
“If you aren’t going to eat, we should get going,” Yahgurkin said. “I haven’t seen or heard any sign of the sheep this morning, so the first order of business is to backtrack from last night, see if we can pick up Groxor’s trail.”
Mulrox and the Malcognitos Page 9