The sheep closed ranks, bearing their flat teeth.
“Alright,” Yahgurkin growled. “I get it. It has to be him.” She turned back to Groxor. “Get rhyming.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“Now!” she said.
Groxor flushed a yellowish green and swallowed. “The fluffy, white, and glowing sheep…”
The sheep nodded their heads in time to his words, baaing appreciatively.
Unbelievable. Yahgurkin rolled her eyes.
Groxor started again, seeming to grow more confident with their reception.
“The fluffy, white, and glowing sheep,
Saw foes… but did not make a peep….”
The sheep nodded.
“They hemmed and hawed,
The ground they pawed,
But let them through. Their word they keep.”
Groxor stopped and looked up at the sheep. They rushed forward and began to mill about his legs, nuzzling and rubbing up against his calves, leaving the portal wide open.
“Now what?” Yahgurkin asked, stepping toward the odd patch of air. Could this really take her to another dimension? She could see a loose purple fog seeping out around the edges. She peered closer and thought she could make out spots of yellow and pink and blue. She could hardly believe it.
“We go to Sounous,” Rodenia said.
“Yahgurkin, hurry,” Groxor’s voice warned. She looked up; sheep were approaching from either side of the clearing.
“Time to go,” Rodenia said, and without looking back, she dove through the portal.
There was more mist now as if her exit had sprung some sort of hole.
“I know, I know.” Groxor was kneeling next to Fleecefuz. “I missed you too. Meet me in Ulgorprog. No, we’ll sort it out later.”
“Groxor!” Yahgurkin said. “Come on.”
Groxor patted Fleecefuz on the head once more and then joined Yahgurkin.
“You first,” she said.
Groxor nodded and, with one look back to the sheep, stepped through the portal.
Mist gushed out after him. It was so thick now that Yahgurkin could hardly tell the portal from the rest of the landscape. Her heart was thudding in her chest, and she could feel her whole body practically thrumming with excitement. Another world, all new creatures. She had wanted an adventure.
“Alright,” she whispered to Geraldine. And clutching the cage to her chest, she ran forward into the mist.
43
Mulrox and Tork crept through the pantry. Everything that Toad-stool-steps had told him, everything he had seen was bouncing around his head in a jumble.
“Are we really in my mind?” he whispered.
Yes, Tork said. Very dangerous place.
The whole place, from the bedrooms to the pantry, was his own creation. His hut as he had always wished it to be. The sheep, the cedar waxwings—he had dreamed those up too. The magnificent garden outside the palace walls was simply a twisted version of Yahgurkin’s garden. Even the glamour they had feared for so long came from his own good ideas, the logosophilos.
Who was Tabiyeh to take over his mind? She thought he was weak, and he had been, but he had struggled through her glamour once. Now that he knew what it was, what she was up to, he was sure he could do it again. This was his mind. If he couldn’t do what he wanted here, then he had no shot anywhere else.
Tork shoved aside a box of potatoes and pulled him into a hallway on the west side of his hut. They had reached its end when he felt a tug.
Wait.
She had snagged the back of his shirt with a hook.
There were sounds ahead. Someone talking. Mulrox strained forward and then shivered. That horrible, honey-coated voice was burned into his mind. It was Tabiyeh.
“We have to get closer,” Mulrox said. He peered around the corner. It was dark except for a beam of light spilling out from a room at the end of the hall. His study. She was in there, plotting who knew what. Mulrox wanted to storm down there and challenge her, but his time in the Woods Mercurial had taught him a few things. “Come on,” he whispered.
The hallway had deep alcoves every few feet that displayed any number of treasures, a full set of armor, a bear’s skeleton, a large stone head.
He started forward, but Tork didn’t move. She was shaking. He grabbed the grinder and pulled her after him. They made their way down the hallway until they were a few feet from the study, then Mulrox pulled them into an alcove where they took cover behind a set of large wooden masks.
From their hiding place, Mulrox could make out what they were saying plainly.
“Have you secured the malcognitos?” Tabiyeh said.
“Yes,” said another voice, “they are already starting to fade. A few more hours, and there will be nothing left.”
“At least that part is going to plan. We almost lost everything with that dendrool attack. Who is watching them? The dendrools are supposed to stay in Sounous. If we had lost Mulrox––”
“I’ll-show-them got a little overzealous. He’s been spoken to. It won’t happen again.”
“He does what I tell him, or he can join the others.” There was a sigh. “And Ulgorprog? How are the preparations coming?”
“The stage is complete. Griselda claims the sheep have taken over ninety percent of the town.”
Mulrox’s fist clenched. Griselda had been helping her after all.
The sound of pottery shattering snapped Mulrox out of his thoughts.
“Your Greatness!” the other voice exclaimed.
“I told her every last one. There are only a few hours left. What is she doing?”
“I…”
“That’s not going to be good enough if I get up there and they… they…” Tabiyeh’s voice cracked.
“It will be taken care of—you have nothing to worry about.”
“Nothing to worry about? Did you hear the way Mulrox spoke to me?”
Mulrox’s brow furrowed and he leaned closer.
“He was confused. It’s the malcognitos,” said the voice. “They’ve poisoned his mind.”
“This is not how it was supposed to go. He’s even resisting the glamour. I don’t know how. He shouldn’t be able to, but he keeps asking for them.”
“Everything will go perfectly, exactly as you planned. Once he sees everything you’ve done for him, he’ll come around.”
There were several deep breaths, then Tabiyeh continued. “Okay. Make sure Griselda finishes the job and that the glamour holds.”
“They are going to love you.”
“They must. I’m not stepping foot in that dimension until it’s sorted.”
The sound of many metal legs stampeded toward them. He clasped Tork to him as a grinder went flying past their hiding place and skid to a stop outside the study.
Intruders!
“What?” Tabiyeh said.
Intruders. Garden. Now.
“How’s this possible?” Tabiyeh yelled. “I told you to post guards on the portals.”
“I did, but new ones keep popping up and—” said the other voice.
Ogre in the garden!
Mulrox’s heart leapt; it could only be one person.
“Unbelievable!” Tabiyeh moaned.
“I’ll grab the others. We’ll take care of it.”
“No. This ogress has been a nuisance for far too long. I’ll take care of it. A little time down in the cellar with the others should do the trick.”
“But she’s not from here. What will the cellar even do?”
“Same as it does for everyone. Once Mulrox forgets her, they’ll be nothing left,” Tabiyeh said.
Mulrox tried to rush forward, but Tork threw her crowbar arm against his legs, pinning him to the wall.
“I’ll come with you,” said the other voice.
“No. Check on Mulrox—make sure he’s still content. We’ll need his cooperation.”
Mulrox saw the grinder disappear the way it had come. Behind it trailed two floating shapes,
one white, one red, each nearly as tall as he was and vaguely ogre shaped. The light from the doorway was gone, but there was no sign of the vortex.
44
Yahgurkin could not believe her eyes. Of all the things she had imagined finding on the other side of the portal, an enormous garden overflowing with color and life had not been one of them. They were standing amidst the trunks of dozens of flowering cherry trees planted in straight rows. The bright pink blossoms filled the air with their cloying smell. Petals spiraled down to the lush carpet of moss below. The garden was so thick with these fanciful petals that it looked as though they had stumbled into a pink snowstorm. Yahgurkin wanted to gag.
Groxor, on the other hand, looked transported. His jaw dropped nearly to his chest, his head swiveling from side to side. He would like this overmanicured mess. More than once, she had caught him sneaking about in her garden, trying to arrange the chaos, pull wandering organic lines straight, or cut the abundant brambles down to size.
Up ahead, Yahgurkin could see splotches of green, and she gladly threaded her way out of the trees and onto a path. Here, the garden sprawled out before her, cut into clear geometric swaths of uniform color and texture that led to a large wooden gazebo at the far end of the garden. All along the path loomed sheep-shaped topiary. They were so terrifyingly lifelike that Yahgurkin half expected one of them to lean down and ram her in the knee or plead with Groxor for another poem. Though the handiwork wasn’t her style, Yahgurkin couldn’t help but marvel at it.
But she didn’t like this place. Yahgurkin spun around, taking it all in. She had never seen anything alive look so boxed and methodical. It embodied everything she disliked about gardening—life constrained and strangled into unnatural shapes and colors, picked clean of variety and vitality—but there was more to it. There was something wrong.
“This place is amazing,” Groxor called. “Have we been here before?”
“No,” she said. “Not here.”
It was as though she were staring at her garden through the end of a glass bottle—it was twisted and warped but unquestionably hers. The gazebo draped in a coat of delicate and ephemeral morning glories stood exactly where her own trellis should have been with its squiggly hair of passionfruit flowers. Bushes of shiny green holly with brilliant red berries instead of the eerie white beads of the doll’s eye plant. The flower-shaped earthstar and the brilliant red geodesic dome of the basket fungus were replaced by the straight-stemmed cups of tulips and the endlessly boring perfume of red roses. The nearly black leaves of her sweet potato vine swapped for the hot pink flowers of a bougainvillea. And her treasure, her beautiful sword garden, was replaced with row upon row of disgusting, bigheaded sunflowers. They were so bright they looked as though they had been dipped in gold. This was her garden, but some contrived, boring version of it.
“We’re here. Now what? I don’t see Mulrox anywhere,” Groxor said.
“We’re looking for a way to get in there.” Rodenia emerged from the inside of a pumpkin with a mouth full of seeds. Yahgurkin couldn’t help but think that her winged gourds would have tasted better, but she kept her mouth shut.
The squirrelmonk pointed up over the garden wall. There, looming over everything, was the biggest structure Yahgurkin had ever seen; story upon story of bulging stones and oddly shaped windows. It looked like it had been cobbled together, each piece tacked onto the last with a jumble of misshapen stones and discarded wood. The dirty windows reflected back the late afternoon light, leading her eye to the only entrance, a single blue wooden door. Atop the whole thing sat a patchy, thatched roof sprouting a growth of chimneys. She half expected to spy a dragon-ensconced fireplace or an overturned blackboard through an open window.
“There’s the door,” Groxor said. He had joined her at the center of the garden. “It should be easy to…”
Yahgurkin followed Groxor’s stare as they took in the enormous wall that enclosed the garden. At least forty feet high, the stone walls stretched without interruption as far as she could see.
“Alright, rat thing, you’ve been here before. You lead the way,” Groxor said.
Rodenia crawled the rest of the way out of the pumpkin and brushed the goop from her cloak. “This was where we met. She was here when I got here, and she sent me back before she left.”
“We’re trapped?” Groxor said, looking about him as though he wanted to smash something.
“Unlikely. Somebody has to tend to all this,” Yahgurkin said. “It certainly didn’t spring up naturally. There’ll be a door along here somewhere.”
“We’ll spread out,” Groxor suggested.
“Fine, but it’s your turn with Geraldine,” she said.
Groxor scowled but took the cage from her.
They set off in opposite directions. Yahgurkin kicked at the ground as she made her way toward the opposite wall, wandering between a line of snowbells and honeysuckle. “These plants shouldn’t even be blooming at the same time,” she muttered. “Who does she think she is?”
Yahgurkin had almost reached the far wall when a wash of purple light erupted under the gazebo. Yahgurkin dove behind a honeysuckle bush, curling up as tightly as she could behind the puny foliage. What was that thing? She had only caught the briefest glimpse of a swirling tumult of light and air, like a tornado of violet light. She lay there, hoping whatever it was would just go away. Yahgurkin took several long breaths. When her heart no longer felt as though it were summoning a hoard of angry ogres to raid, she steeled herself, rolled into a crouch, and peered out from behind the flowers.
Underneath the domed roof of the gazebo hovered a spinning purple light, like the swirl of a faraway galaxy bursting with billions of brilliant suns. Yahgurkin had never seen anything more beautiful. She was awestruck for several moments, but slowly the rest of the world filtered back in and she remembered where she was and what she was doing here.
This was who had been filling Mulrox’s head with all that nonsense. Tabiyeh. Yahgurkin’s good arm clenched at her side and her jaw settled into a scowl. She had half a mind to stomp up to the vortex and tell Tabiyeh exactly what she thought of all this. As the light floated down from the gazebo and onto the garden path, the yawning complaint of a door caught her attention. Tabiyeh had not magically appeared. The way out of the garden was down, under the gazebo. Clever.
As the thing glided up the path, Yahgurkin inched her way back toward the gazebo, keeping low to the ground. Her legs ached and her heart beat so loudly she thought it would surely give her away. But the light skimmed through a bed of brilliant orange tulips, seemingly oblivious to the ogre behind her.
The white pillars of the gazebo were so close she could see the grain of the wood through the paint. Yahgurkin smiled, she might have a shot to slip under the gazebo unnoticed. She steeled herself for a mad dash. Then out of the corner of her eye, something caught her attention. There, hidden under a bed of pink snapdragons, was Rodenia waving her arms frantically at Yahgurkin. When Rodenia was sure she had the ogre’s attention, she pointed back up the garden.
Groxor was stomping merrily through the grove of sunflowers with Geraldine rattling around in her cage on his back as though they were in no danger at all. His bright green body stood out like a beacon among the reedy flowers. Yahgurkin tried to will Groxor to look up, to take cover, to do anything. But he was busy smashing the stalks, knocking off their heads, and trampling the seeds underfoot as though he were back at the practice grounds.
“I know you’re here, ogress.” The voice was filled with white noise as though a river rushed around her words, filling the gaps and holes between them.
A chill shook Yahgurkin.
“It’s so kind of you to come, but I’m taking care of Mulrox. I promise.”
The vortex continued forward. A few more feet and she would surely see Groxor.
Yahgurkin had to think fast. She could slip in now; she was almost sure of it. She looked down at the sling round her neck and the useless arm that hung inside.
>
“This is pointless,” Tabiyeh said.
Groxor knocked another sunflower from its stalk. This time, the percussive rattle of its fall caught the light’s attention. She was turning toward Groxor. She would see him any second.
“Hey, you!” Yahgurkin shouted. She didn’t know what she was doing. “Garden stealer!” She leapt from behind the bushes and ran toward the pillar of light.
“Yahgurkin.” The light laughed. She turned slowly, like a spider content to wait while its prey thrashed against its web.
Behind Tabiyeh, Groxor’s head snapped up. He looked like he was about to charge toward her when a small, furry paw caught him about the mouth. A bedraggled tail wrapped around his shoulders, and then the ogre and squirrelmonk disappeared into a thick clump of pussy willows.
You better not bungle this, Yahgurkin thought. She turned back to the vortex, all her nerves going sharp and brittle as she stood now before the towering tornado of purple light.
“I’ve come for Mulrox and the malcognitos,” Yahgurkin said.
“I’m glad you stopped by.”
“You can’t do this. I demand you let them go!”
“Let them go?” She laughed. “But they’re free to do whatever they like. They chose to come. The malcognitos are finally home and Mulrox couldn’t be happier. I’ve arranged everything.”
“What, by making this tacky version of my garden?”
A spark snapped from the Tabiyeh. “I’m sorry they left you, but don’t take that out on me. He was relieved to be rid of you. They all were.”
Rodenia made them leave. They tricked him, Yahgurkin told herself.
“Mulrox is destined for greatness. But you… It’s no surprise you’re always alone.”
Yahgurkin swallowed. “It doesn’t matter.” Her voice caught and wavered like an injured bird, but she managed to continue. “I’ve come anyway, and I’m not leaving until I see them. Take me to the malcognitos!”
“Gladly.”
The vortex closed the gap between them in two shuddering movements, and a spray of white dust hit Yahgurkin square in the face.
Mulrox and the Malcognitos Page 28