“I guess that’s Crow’s Nest Clearing,” Mulrox said.
Yvwi nodded.
Oblivious to their hesitation, Groxor stumbled forward into the clearing. All at once, the crows leapt off the tree and up into the sky. The clapping whoosh of wings and harsh cries filled the air.
Geraldine. Mulrox scanned the ground until he saw the toad’s dark form. She would be easy enough to carry off, especially if enough of them were at it. He wouldn’t put anything past crows. He’d have to carry her.
But before he could say anything, Geraldine butted Yahgurkin’s calf with her triangular head. Yahgurkin leaned her head down close to the toad and began to nod.
“Of course!” she said. “All aboard the toad express, next stop Sounous.” And she picked up Geraldine with one hand.
Mulrox noted her coat did not have the proper toad-carrying pockets—too shallow. She’d get tired of carrying Geraldine in her hands. But Yahgurkin immediately set about fiddling with her belt of pouches until she had combined several of the contents and freed one of the larger ones. She slipped Geraldine inside so that only her head peeked out the top.
“Here, Mulrox. Take Groxor,” Yahgurkin said.
“Can’t he take himself?” Mulrox grumbled but took the rope from her hand and was immediately jerked into the clearing by the much larger ogre. Mulrox gave the rope a frustrated tug back in response, but Groxor hardly seemed to notice.
“Loud and Dirty swimming ink,
Clogged the drain around the sink.”
Groxor shouted, waving at the birds above him.
“You’re an idiot, you know that?” Mulrox muttered.
“He’s brilliantly creative,” Yvwi said.
“He just smashes words together.”
“Ah yes, the beautiful intricacies of language. Or what we creatives like to call, writing.”
“Aren’t you worried about the crows?” Yahgurkin asked, looking at the swarm of malcognitos.
“The crows found they didn’t like the taste of Spinakle-rex last time, and we are much improved since then.”
Mulrox looked at the swarm of malcognitos and noted that they had grown again and were now nearly as large as the crows themselves.
The party walked as quickly as they could across the clearing, the malcognitos and crows trading insults. Mulrox only looked up once and immediately wished he hadn’t. The pale blue sky could hardly be seen through the dark splotches of crow bodies that soared and dove above him. At one point, he felt the whoosh of air as one of the braver birds plunged just over his head. But the birds never touched him or any of his other companions, and after a few breathless moments, they were back within the safety of the trees. Mulrox never thought he would be so glad to see those dark branches blot out the sky.
“This way,” Yvwi said and started off deeper into the woods.
They walked along in silence for several minutes, staring into the shadowed glens with ferns the size of pigs, bathed in the swirling filtered light of the forest.
Eventually, Yahgurkin turned to Mulrox. “Why don’t you try applying your prophesied idea-generating ability to curing Groxor?” she said with a half-hearted smile.
“I don’t think it’s for that sort of thing.”
“How do you know? The voice in your dream only said it would be the greatest idea. Not what it would be.”
Mulrox frowned. He didn’t think his ideas should be wasted on Groxor, but he might as well get all the bad ideas out now before it really mattered.
“I’ll try.” He closed his eyes, trying to clear his mind of all else but Groxor. He took a deep breath but nothing happened. Mulrox scrunched his eyes tighter. Cure Groxor. Come on. All he saw was the black of his own eyelids.
Mulrox shook his head. “Nothing. I don’t know how.”
“Of course you don’t know how; it’s the first time you’ve tried to cure malcognitus. It won’t just come to you. Think of the related things you’ve done or seen or read, and see what’s similar. Try things out. Start eliminating things.”
“I don’t know.”
“Try.”
Mulrox thought through everything he knew about Groxor, his madness, and the malcognitos. He tried to focus on the malcognitus, but all he could think about was how annoying the creatures were and how much he wished Groxor would go home or fall in a river or get stuck in a tree.
None of his thoughts suggested a cure. This was ridiculous. He didn’t know anything about cures. Or malcognito diseases. Why was he even trying?
“I can’t,” he said.
“It doesn’t have to be good,” Yahgurkin said. “Just try something.”
Mulrox shook his head.
“No one’s going to punish you for getting it wrong. I tried a dozen things and none of them worked.”
Mulrox shook his head, but Yahgurkin was staring at him expectantly.
He sighed and tried again. This time, he thought of all the illnesses, curses, maladies, and afflictions he had seen or read of heroes overcoming. What had Ikarax the Insidious done when Balour had fallen ill? What had cured Prekin in the hidden cove? As he sorted through these, a pattern began to emerge.
“Okay,” Mulrox said. An idea, a most magnificent idea had occurred to him. “I think I have it. But I’ll need your help.”
He waved Yvwi over, who was now in the shape of a boot with a loose and flapping sole, and whispered his idea into what he supposed was the malcognito’s ear.
“I’m liking this.” Yvwi nodded. “Alright, HALT!” he yelled, and all the malcognitos fell still. “We are trying Mulrox’s magnificent idea. We need everyone present. Yahgurkin, you’ll need to hold the rope tight.”
“Okay, Yvwi, now exactly like before,” Mulrox said.
“Here we go!” Yvwi said. He arched backward as far as he could go, and then with one quick movement he rocked forward and spit straight in Groxor’s face.
Groxor lunged forward, knocking malcognitos in every direction, his face dripping with sparkly blue goop. He pawed at his face, flinging phlegm all around him. Then he froze.
The filthy green ogre pulled up out of his miserable crouch. He stood upright, straightening until Groxor stood before them again, proud and overbearing. He turned toward them.
“You did it!” Yahgurkin said. “It was more spit?”
“Like a button, once for on and then again for off. We just had to repeat how he caught malcognitus in the first place to reverse it.”
Yahgurkin nodded, impressed.
Groxor glared out from under his deep, furrowed brow and clenched his fists. Mulrox hadn’t thought through what would happen if he actually fixed Groxor.
“Groxor,” Mulrox began. “I… you, um…”
Groxor opened his mouth.
Mulrox winced.
But a high unpleasant voice began to sing.
“Tiny, whiny alligator
Caught a bird and then he ate her.
Well, it came up,
And it went down,
But then it weres a lovely brown.”
“Gross,” Yvwi said.
Mulrox lowered his arms to look at Groxor. The green ogre was dripping with malcognito snot and had the goofiest smile Mulrox had ever seen. Groxor let out a high-pitched giggle.
“Well, that didn’t work,” Yahgurkin said. “What’s next?”
“What’s next?” Mulrox could hardly believe what he was hearing. “I made him worse!”
“I don’t know,” Yvwi said. “To my mind, he’s coming along nicely.”
Groxor pranced through the stand of trees, waving his arms and spinning.
“This is stupid,” Mulrox said. “There’s probably no fixing him. We should give up. I––”
The air popped and then a shape—a translucent, oozing thing—burst into existence. A malcognito—yet another no-good idea.
“Another one! Hi there,” Yahgurkin said. “You must be Mulrox’s snot idea. We’re trying to fix Groxor. Come on, you can help too.”
Mu
lrox shook his head. Nothing had changed––he was still the same ogre with the worst ideas imaginable. What the light had said wasn’t real. She, the garden, and everything in it were just a product of his twisted mind. Without looking back, Mulrox pushed forward, walking as quickly as he could through the parade of malcognitos until he reached the two pathfinders—Death-with-a-kiss and Spinakle-rex. The two malcognitos paused as he drew near but, after what Mulrox could only assume was as a shrug, returned to their scouting, leaving Mulrox alone and in between with his miserable thoughts.
20
At first as Mulrox walked under the trees with only the company of the two malcognitos, he couldn’t help but be on edge. All the stories of the terrible things that had befallen ogres in the Woods Mercurial kept coming back to him. Behind every tree, he expected to see the fluffy white wool of a rabid sheep or an evil prince set on robbing him of his possessions.
For hours now, there had been a persistent rustling and the occasional twitter coming from the underbrush. Death-with-a-kiss and Spinakle-rex seemed to think nothing of the noise, so Mulrox had done his best to ignore it. But when the rustling sounded directly to his right behind a blackberry bramble, Mulrox gathered his courage and peeked over the top. On the ground sat the most ridiculous-looking bird he had ever seen. It sported a pink mohawk, a black streak over its eyes like a bandit mask, a yellow-tipped tail, and on each wing tip, little red dots like the feathers had been dipped in sealing wax.
It couldn’t be. The hilarious bird chirped as it hopped about the ground. Mulrox dug in his pack and pulled out the little wooden bird from his mother’s mobile. They were nearly identical. A cedar waxwing. He had never seen one in person before. Perhaps the woods weren’t all bad. The little bird cocked its head, chittered, and then flew off into the trees.
That afternoon, Mulrox saw so many waxwings it was almost as if they were following them. He spied them sitting up in the branches of the trees, scratching in the dirt, and hopping along the trail. They were proud-looking birds and pretended to give the ogre hardly any notice, but more than once he caught them stealing a glance in his direction. Mulrox chuckled to himself.
“Pugnacious punks with fluttering feathers
Stick to me as if tied by tethers.”
Mulrox heard the now-familiar pop from behind him and sighed as yet another malcognito floated forward to join the others. Mulrox shook his head—he had thought that idea wasn’t too bad.
“Too flowery for my taste,” Yvwi said as he floated over Mulrox’s shoulder.
The rest of the group had caught up with him.
“I liked it,” Yahgurkin said.
“No,” Yvwi said, “you need something a little more like:
Birdy punks, and flying skunks,
Are all the same to me.
I almost fell, from the smell,
That wafted from their tree.”
Groxor clapped his hands with delight.
“See!” Yvwi said. “You need to stop trying so hard. Be more like me.” Yvwi wiggled and then changed from an amorphous blob into a fat and scruffy skunk.
“Yes, all I have to do is infect everyone with malcognitus, and then they’ll love your disgusting rhymes.” Mulrox sighed. “We’ve been walking for hours. I thought you said the portal was close.”
“It is close,” Yvwi said. “This tree is definitely familiar.” He pointed with his striped tail to a tree that looked very much like all the others. “The mossy curtain place should be ahead.”
As they walked, the forest faded from a deep brown into a world of brilliant green. Here, the trees looked as though they had donned florescent green coats, their trunks zipped up in the fluffy-looking moss and their branches covered to their tips. As the group pushed on, the moss faded to a deep green and then on to a pale yellow. But even as the color waned, its presence became even more prominent, dripping from the branches like long, trailing sleeves. Mulrox could hardly see more than a few feet in front of him now, as everywhere he looked hung sheets of the noodle-like plant. They were among the mossy curtains. All that was left now was to find the tree with the ogre’s face.
The more Mulrox walked, the worse he felt. If they were as close as Yvwi had promised, any minute now they would find the portal and would cross the border into Sounous. All Mulrox wanted to do was write poetry and be left alone—interdimensional traveling and mythical beast slaying seemed a far cry from anything he was capable of. Maybe the malcognitos were right about Groxor. From the moment Groxor appeared at his hut, Mulrox had been trying to come up with ways to get rid of him, but for the first time, he was glad the enormous green ogre was there.
“Stop,” came a weary voice from behind him. Yahgurkin was motioning for them to join her.
“What is it?” Mulrox picked at the skin around his nails. “Did you find the portal?”
Yahgurkin shook her head and stared at Yvwi. The malcognito just looked down.
“What’s going on?” Mulrox asked.
“See that?” Yahgurkin pointed to a nearby tree.
“Yes,” Mulrox said. It looked like a normal tree to him.
Mulrox looked back up at the tree, trying his best to see something unusual about it. It was thick-trunked thing with several branching limbs that shot up into what looked to be enormous trees in their own right. He saw nothing unusual.
Geraldine took one look at Mulrox and then hopped forward and, with a kick, leapt up into the air and slapped a section of the trunk. A series of shallow horizontal notches sliced the base of the tree. Mulrox walked over to them and ran his fingers over the grooves, trying to think like Yahgurkin had taught him. The grooves seemed fresh.
“Something must have left these,” Mulrox said. “They’re not natural. Could be some sort of animal or… maybe it’s the Vaccus?” As Mulrox said the name, his throat went dry and he could hardly choke out the words.
“It’s not the Vaccus,” Yahgurkin said.
“How do you know? We hardly know anything about the creature. It could be stalking us and—”
“I made them.”
“You?”
Mulrox looked around to the others for support, but Yvwi and the malcognitos were avoiding eye contact and looking down at the forest floor. Only Geraldine looked at him and she fixed him with a piercing stare. Mulrox glanced back to the tree, and then to the broken branches and dusty footprints.
“We’ve been here before,” Mulrox said.
Yahgurkin nodded.
“We’re going in circles.”
Mulrox looked over to Death-with-a-kiss and Spinakle-rex, who were fidgeting nervously, and then to Yvwi. The malcognito didn’t look up.
“But where’s the tree with the ogre’s face?”
“There.” Yahgurkin pointed to the tree next to the one she marked. Sure enough, Mulrox could see it. The bulbous nose, deep eye ridges and a small, hollowed-out section as the angry mouth.
No one said anything.
Mulrox swallowed. This was all happening too fast. “So we’re here. What are we waiting for?”
Where was the portal? Why hadn’t they said anything earlier? Had they discussed this without him? Did they no longer want him along for the journey?
He stomped over to Yvwi. “You think I can’t handle it. You’ve got Groxor, and now I’m just weighing you down.”
Yvwi shook his head.
“Then why won’t you take us to the portal?”
“Because the portal is gone.”
21
“How long have you known?” Mulrox demanded.
Yvwi shrugged. “An hour.”
“What exactly was the plan? We’d walk in circles for the rest of our lives?” Mulrox asked.
“It was a possibility.”
“Do you know any other way to Sounous?” Yahgurkin asked.
“No. Interdimensional portals are not as common as you’d think.”
From behind them, Groxor let out a long, low belch.
Mulrox tried to ignore him. “So you
dragged us out here and turned my life inside out for nothing.”
“I’m only trying to save all the malcognitos,” Yvwi said. “But I guess you would call that nothing.”
“We’ll figure something out.” Yahgurkin glared at Yvwi. “This is just a setback.”
The rope gave a sudden twang and snapped out of Yahgurkin’s grasp. “Hey!” She looked at her hands and then back at the ogre who had disappeared behind the nearest tree. “Groxor, come back!”
“I suppose you’ll leave next.” Yvwi turned to Mulrox. “You never wanted to be here. Now that the portal’s gone, there’s no reason to stick around.”
“Of course he’s not leaving!” Yahgurkin said. “We’re in this together.”
“We’re just supposed to stay in the Woods Mercurial with no plan, no idea how to get to Sounous?”
“Maybe you’d like to hand us over to those moronic sheep instead,” Yvwi said. He gave Mulrox a meaningful glare.
Mulrox felt his cheeks begin to burn. “I didn’t—”
“Vomit like a comet!” Groxor bellowed and a loud, ungracious retching echoed from behind the tree.
Yahgurkin snatched up the loose end of the rope from the ground and then, once the retching had faded, gave it a gentle tug.
Groxor had been looking bad for some time now, but as he stepped out from the undergrowth with fresh stains mixed in with the dirt and malcognito spit, Mulrox realized what a mess he truly was. The ogre had tree branches and tufts of wool clinging to him, and his skin was a yellowish green that looked more like curdled cream than his usual brilliant grass color.
From amidst the cloud of malcognitos, something plunked to the ground.
“What did you do?” Yahgurkin said. “I said to give him a break.”
Yvwi shrugged.
Yahgurkin kneeled and snatched the thing from the dirt. She wiped it off and then held it up. It was a fist-sized white blob studded all over with an oozing red liquid.
She grimaced. “Where did you get this?”
“One of your pouches. What is it?” Yvwi asked.
Mulrox and the Malcognitos Page 14