Not Mulrox.
The grinder whacked its mallet foot against the ground in frustration.
“WHERE IS MULROX?” the sheep demanded.
Groxor rubbed his wrists together and looked about. The grinder took one sidling step toward him, but Groxor was on it in a second. With one swift kick, he sent the metal creature hurtling into the trees.
The lead sheep shimmied to the side as though it would circle around behind him, but Groxor leaned over and grabbed it about the middle. Holding the animal at chest height, he spun round twice and then let go. The sheep rocketed through the air and then crashed back down into the flock, sending tufts of wool and legs flying in every direction.
The baaing grew louder and the remaining sheep circled around the ogre.
“Groxor!” Yahgurkin tried to rush to his side, but Mulrox caught hold of her.
“He was attacking you last time. Don’t confuse him.”
Yahgurkin’s eyes widened, and she nodded.
Groxor’s large green arm flew up and then swept through the line of sheep, sending them toppling in all directions. For the first time in his life, Mulrox was rooting for Groxor. The green ogre continued to plow through the sheep shouting and singing to himself as he went.
“Little sheep,
Little sheep,
Prancing through the trees.
A simple dance
And you and me
Can rid us of our fleas.”
Groxor was now leaping and twirling through the air like a drunken butterfly, knocking sheep this way and that.
Groxor grabbed the nearest sheep and, with one quick step, drop-kicked it through the air. It landed in a shrub some thirty feet away. Mulrox watched it struggle to its feet and then dart into the safety of the trees. The grinder had not returned. The herd of sheep stared at Groxor, their eyes rolling. He lunged toward them, and the animals shrieked and scattered into the forest.
Mulrox thought that was the end of it, but the clearing was not empty. Standing frozen in the middle of the glade was a solitary sheep. It was staring at Groxor, eyes so wide they threatened to take over its entire face. As Groxor strode forward, its matchstick legs began to tremble.
Groxor laid a hand across the sheep’s back, then tilted its face up into his own.
“Sheep?” Groxor said.
The animal bleated, trying to look away, but Groxor held it firm. After several moments, the sheep gave up its struggle and relaxed into the ogre’s hand. This appeared to have been what Groxor was waiting for. He dropped the sheep’s head, scooped the animal up into his arms, and gave it an enormous hug.
“Fleecefuz!” Groxor roared, squeezing even tighter.
The sheep’s eyes bulged and its black tongue poked out the corner of its mouth.
Groxor set the animal down and then, wrapping the shattered pieces of rope from his own bindings several times around the animal’s neck he led it back toward the tree.
17
Yvwi floated out of the tree first, followed closely by Yahgurkin, Geraldine, and finally Mulrox.
“You were amazing!” Yahgurkin said.
“Very inspired!” Yvwi said.
“What was that thing with all the legs? Was that the Vaccus?” Yahgurkin said.
“Grinder,” Mulrox said. “It showed up in Ulgorprog too. On the road and at my hut…”
“At least we have Groxor on our side,” Yahgurkin said.
“Fleecefuz!” Groxor roared. He wrapped his sheep in a gigantic hug and then, leaning over, licked the top of the animal’s head.
“Right,” Yahgurkin said. “We need to fix that.”
“Are you sure he didn’t enjoy licking sheep before?” Mulrox mumbled.
“He just saved your life,” Yahgurkin said.
“Not really.”
Yahgurkin narrowed her eyes, but she turned away from him and continued. “Alright,” she said. “How do we cure him? Any ideas?”
* * *
It turned out Yvwi was practically exploding with ideas, but as the sun was already beginning to set, Yahgurkin and Yvwi agreed that they would work on a cure first thing in the morning. Tonight, they would camp in the hollow tree.
As the others set out their things for the night, Mulrox hunted for dry sticks and leaves for kindling. He could hear them even now talking about Groxor. It was as though they had never left Ulgorprog.
Mulrox laid out the fire and coaxed a small flame to life. When it had taken, he turned back to the others.
“So I was thinking, tomorrow we should start early and—”
“We’ve got Groxor now,” Yvwi said. “What’s the rush?”
“I still can’t believe how he plowed through those sheep,” Yahgurkin said.
Mulrox clenched his teeth and tossed a log onto the fire. It snapped and shot sparks into the dark.
Yahgurkin glanced back at Mulrox.
“He was like a majestic porcupine searching for hugs,” Yvwi said. “A wet sock among—”
“What about the portal? Shouldn’t we be focusing on that?” Mulrox said.
“Yes, we’ll get to that.”
“Yesterday that was all you could talk about! And now you want to start a Groxor fan club.”
“An interesting proposition.”
“Nothing’s changed, Mulrox, but you have to admit he did a pretty amazing job with those sheep.”
“What about the Vaccus! We still don’t even really know what it is or how to defeat it.”
“But we found our Vaccus slayer!” Yvwi said, and the other malcognitos floated around Groxor, clapping him on the back.
Groxor giggled.
Mulrox’s mouth dropped open. “But I thought you said I was the only—”
“Don’t worry,” Yahgurkin said. “We’ll fix Groxor tomorrow morning and then we’ll still be able to reach the portal by the end of the day.”
“Look how great he was with malcognitus,” Yvwi said. “After we fix him, he’ll be unstoppable.”
“But you’re my—” Mulrox fought down several half-formed thoughts. “Fine! But before you all go off on your quest, perhaps the Vaccus slayer here could clear the sheep from my house. If you don’t need me, I’d like my old life back.”
Yahgurkin’s mouth twisted into a worried knot. Geraldine grunted.
“I’m sure he’d be glad to,” Yvwi said. “Wouldn’t you, old Groxy?” He slapped Groxor on the back. Groxor belched and then picked up a stick from the ground and scratched himself with it.
“Wonderful,” Mulrox said, pushing to his feet. “Come on, Geraldine. They don’t need us anymore.”
Geraldine glared at Mulrox and took several hops closer to Yahgurkin.
Mulrox’s frowned. “I said, let’s go.”
The black toad’s tongue darted in and out of her lips waspishly.
“Geraldine, now!”
She slapped the ground with her foot and let loose a gargling tirade.
Heat rushed to Mulrox’s face and his stomach burned. “Grow up? Who’s the one out here trying to protect you?”
Geraldine growled.
“You don’t need me? Have fun living with Yahgurkin then.”
“Mulrox!” Yahgurkin said.
“It’s what she wants! Isn’t it?”
Geraldine said nothing.
“See!” Mulrox stormed off to the hollow tree, fists clenched and eyes burning. Alone. “You lot deserve each other!” he shouted and kicked a pine cone off into the bushes.
Mulrox slipped through the charred opening, dragged his things to the darkest corner of the tree, and curled up into a ball. He was fine on his own. He was always alone; it was nothing new. He clenched his fingers. He missed the feel of Geraldine’s bumpy head under his hand. This was how it would be now. He bit his lip, but then an idea came to him. He rummaged in his pack and pulled out the little bird figurine from his mobile. He ran his thumb over the smooth ridges of the bird’s crest and wings and tried to think of nothing.
It was quiet around the fire for som
e time. Mulrox’s eyes adjusted to the dim light as he studied the scaled surface of the burned tree, almost like a jet-black alligator.
It was pointless. The malcognitos, the Behemoth, all of it. He might as well be in Raggok. They wouldn’t miss him. Cobwebs clouded the space above him, and Mulrox had to try hard not to picture the types of things that must be creeping and swinging above his head or around his side. He wrapped his blanket tighter around himself.
Outside the tree, the muffled voices of the others drifted toward him.
“He has a point, you know. Yvwi, you have to tell us more about the Vaccus if we’re going to have a chance to defeat it.” Yahgurkin was speaking.
“There’s not that much to tell,” Yvwi said. “The Vaccus is nothingness. It embodies the absence of thought or ideas. It erases anything it touches. I used to think the Vaccus was a legend, but then the dendrools started showing up and I hadn’t believed in them either. And then there were the disappearances.”
“Wait, what’s a dendrool?” Yahgurkin asked.
Mulrox shifted inside the tree, angling himself so he could hear better.
“It’s hard to kill an idea. I mean, sure, we have a body, but it’s not so important. You could squash us into a pancake, or tear us to shreds, or blow a hole—”
Toad-springs-eternal nudged Yvwi.
“Right. Point is, as long as we are thought of, we can come back. Sometimes we change or evolve into something new, but in essence we’re the same. The real danger is when we’re truly forgotten. There’s no coming back from that.”
“What does this have to do with the Vaccus?”
“So impatient.” He tsked her. “I’m weaving a story here.”
“Sorry,” Yahgurkin said.
“Accepted. Anyway, ideas being forgotten is natural. It will happen eventually to all of us. Most of us will fade in a few years, some will last a decade, a small number might last as long as Mulrox does. Very occasionally, an idea might last even longer than that if it happens to catch on in the minds of others. This is so rare it’s not even worth exploring. You are more likely to turn into a crocodile with carrots for teeth than I am to last that long.”
Yahgurkin chuckled.
Mulrox shifted around in the tree until he could peer out and see the others around the campfire. Groxor was curled up on the ground around Fleecefuz, and Geraldine, Yahgurkin, and Yvwi sat huddled together around the fire, their faces glowing in the orange light while the other malcognitos flitted about them.
“Normally when we are forgotten, we fade back into the stuff of Sounous, ready to be repurposed into the next malcognito or building or whatever. But there is another way to go. Sometimes, you don’t become a fig again. Instead you turn into something much, much worse…” He looked around at the group before continuing. “At the borders of our land is a thick purple fog. No one had seen a dendrool in years, but then someone caught sight of one in among the mist. No one believed him. But then someone else saw another. And then another. By the time we escaped to Veralby, the border of Sounous was practically crawling with the creatures.”
Tree-with-frog-legs hid his face. Toad-springs-eternal floated over to reassure him.
“As soon as you step into the mist, you can see them. Tiny, pronged legs, snakelike body. And at the top…” Yvwi shivered. “That’s where its mouth is—in the middle of a mass of sticky tentacles, it has a big, gaping hole. If a dendrool clamps onto you with that mouth, it’s poof city. Doesn’t matter what Mulrox remembers. They grab you and its figs for you.”
“That’s horrible!” Yahgurkin said. “But I still don’t see what this has to do with the Vaccus.”
“As far as we know, there is only one way to make a dendrool.”
“The Vaccus,” Yahgurkin said. “That’s what it does.”
“If an idea is unlucky enough to run into the Vaccus, there’ll shortly be one more dendrool guarding the border.”
“Then all the new dendrools are the missing malcognitos?” Yahgurkin said.
Yvwi looked at the ground. “That’s why we’re here. We all knew someone who disappeared.”
Tree-with-frog-legs emitted a wheezing gasp like the air being forced out of a bagpipe.
“Some of us were closer than others.”
Yahgurkin put a hand out to Tree-with-frog-legs and pulled the little malcognito in close.
As Mulrox looked out at the strange creatures leaping about the flames, his throat tightened. He’d been so focused on his own problems, how this all affected him, that he hadn’t spent much time considering the malcognitos.
Yahgurkin sat like that for several moments, then her head shot up. “But Mulrox is here!”
Mulrox, who had been leaning farther and farther toward the fire, shot back into the darkness and feigned sleep the best he could.
“He might remember them. You could ask him.”
Mulrox felt their eyes searching for him.
“I don’t think so,” Yvwi said. “He hasn’t exactly been dying to help.”
It hurt, like someone kicking him in the stomach. But Yvwi was right—a few more seconds and Mulrox would have handed the malcognitos over to the sheep.
“But I think…” Yahgurkin started. “Well… tomorrow. We can ask him tomorrow.”
“We’ll see.”
Mulrox shifted uncomfortably.
“We think the grinder is acting on behalf of the Vaccus—perhaps it’s even controlled by it somehow. Grinders are not usually so determined on their own.”
“How do we defeat it?” Yahgurkin asked.
There was silence for a while.
“I don’t know. I didn’t really have a plan. When the portal opened up, I thought it was our only shot. I gathered as many of the malcognitos as I could and left. I was hoping Mulrox would—but you see how that’s worked out.”
Mulrox pulled himself deeper into the tree. The malcognitos had showed up to his home, insulted him, and then torn the place apart. Did he really owe them anything?
“He’ll keep trying,” Yahgurkin said. “It doesn’t always seem like it, but I know he cares.”
Mulrox looked at Yahgurkin and then poked at the dust at his feet. She was wrong again, as usual. It was amazing how one ogre could know so much and yet still be wrong so often. Mulrox drew his knees into his chest and stared up at the charred bark of the tree above him. It looked blue in the pale light of his foxfire necklace.
“Maybe Groxor could tackle the Vaccus?” Yvwi offered.
“Wouldn’t that turn Groxor into nothingness?”
“Probably.” Yvwi sighed. “I suppose that’d be bad.”
Mulrox disagreed. It was the first decent idea he’d heard in some time.
* * *
That night, Mulrox dreamed he was standing in a purple fog, writing a poem. Or trying to. Every time he wrote a word, the letters would peel away from the paper and float off, tangling above his head. As he snatched for the words, the purple mist grew thicker and thicker until he found himself at the base of a stand of flowering pink trees. Their petals fluttered down around him like tiny butterflies, giving off an irresistible perfume. Mulrox followed a path through the trees and emerged among the rows of a meticulously manicured garden.
The old dream was back. But it felt different, as though he could choose what he looked at and where he went. He could almost feel the leaves brush against his skin.
The garden was magnificent. Each plant had grown into the most pleasing shape, in perfect alignment with each of the others. No vines grew over the path. No leaves littered the ground. Not a single petal was bruised or torn. Mulrox had always thought he hated gardens, but he had only ever experienced Yahgurkin’s. Whereas Yahgurkin’s garden was a minefield of disasters waiting to happen, everything here seemed soft and muted. There were no cacti, or spike-trunked trees, or devil’s club to fill your hand with spines.
In the middle of the garden stood a gazebo. Mulrox was drawn toward the structure and the purple haze beneath it. As he
drew closer, the light intensified, becoming a brilliant, almost pulsating core of violet light.
“Come here,” the light said.
It spun slowly, reminding Mulrox of the little funnel that formed around the bath drain. It was the vortex, but for the first time he could hear what it was saying and feel the magnetic pull of its spin. Near its center was a ball of golden light that, unlike the rest of the thing, seemed fixed in one place. He didn’t remember seeing that before.
“Mulrox,” the vortex said. Its voice was feminine but broken, full of pops and hisses as though coming from very far away. “The time is finally here.”
Mulrox looked behind him.
“We’ve been waiting for this moment, preparing.”
“We have?”
“You’ve been here a thousand times before. Don’t you remember?”
Mulrox nodded, though he was increasingly feeling as though he had stumbled into a test he hadn’t known was coming.
“Good. All you have to do now is to return home, and everything will go as planned.”
“Go home?”
“Yes. You can’t win the Behemoth if you are wandering around the Woods Mercurial.” The vortex laughed, a burbling sound that made the light ripple.
Mulrox stared at the light. “I’m going to win the Beatific Behemoth?” His voice failed him, and the words came out as more of a whisper.
“You don’t remember then.” It was a statement.
“What are you?”
“They call me Tabiyeh.”
“I remember you but…”
The light drew closer to him.
“Mulrox, you are not a normal ogre.” Mulrox could feel all the hairs on his arms stand upright, and all around him the air popped with static. “You’ve felt this.”
Mulrox nodded.
“I’ve come to help you. To fulfill your potential.”
Mulrox took a step closer, feeling his whole body pulled in toward the glowing light. Finally. This was who Rodenia had been talking about. Someone sent to help him.
“Every night you come to my garden, and we discuss your aspirations and fears.”
He was starting to remember snatches of conversations.
Mulrox and the Malcognitos Page 12