SPARX Incarnation: Mark of the Green Dragon (SPARX Series I Book 1) (20 page)

Chapter XXIX

Interlude - That stupid hag

N
ow I set out to tell you the tale of how I became the gnarly beast that I am, and ere I have brought you to the very time and place when and where I felt less deciduous than ever before or ever after… at least in that life. A world away from sunshine, rain and the free wind that carries it, deep within the element of earth, so deep even roots chance not to go, I sat skulking in the dark, my only company retched vermin and once animated fossils locked in shale, long ago having met inevitability. I contemplated the notion that I would never see the true blue sky again; and that my bones might one day be found amongst those fossils, encased in a silt sarcophagus with evidence of being gnawed upon.

The storm has finally arrived and Amot is off making preparations. He has more Fyorn in him than he cares to admit. I have taken shelter in a west-facing crevice. It is cramped, but dry and the old ranger set me up with enough light to see by and enough ink to mark the pages. May these words find the right reader when the need is greatest.

Back to what’s important. Never lose sight of what’s important.

I have somewhat spoiled my own tale, the story of my great adventure, in the way I have dished it out. Dishes… Ha! My dish is the massive granite formation that cups the overburden. I eat dirt now.

You must have reasoned that
somehow
I escaped the recesses of the dark zone in order to be here, writing this. The only real mystery is how and when I met my fate. For the time being, I continue to reserve the telling of that part of the adventure, while you continue to wonder – if you are the type to wonder about such things.

I will no longer hold back that which is rightfully yours for having read this far – the tale of Holly, Bobbin, Gariff, and Jory on the Mire Trail in the sights of the dreadful bog queens. For this compilation I borrow the collective accounts of all those who were able to speak of the incident afterwards. It is not an adventure, sadly, so much as a tragedy, and the sap runs free whenever I must think it through and through. If you abhor sad tales, skip this part. You have been warned.

*

The mangled mass that was once easy-going Jory lay half-sunk in the bog water, wrapped in half-decayed grasses and moss.

The search crew was quick to find the first of the missing teens and their guardian. But with such a distressing discovery, their optimism for finding the others in good health withered. Mer Andulus was among the volunteers.

“What could have done such a thing?” Mer said, shaking his head as he reached out with his walking stick to comb through some brush.

An air of impatience still lingered in Holly’s voice, and worry kept the skin tight around her eyes.

“I told you all a thousand times already,” she said, “we were ambushed… bog queens… remember?”

“There is no such thing as bog queens, child.” Mer sighed, eyes fixed on the horizon, the grey in them reflecting the morning sky. The old Stout prospector took in the wideness of the scene for a long minute. He always thought the bog was beautiful. He also thought he’d seen it all.

Mer reached over to lay a hand on Holly’s shoulder, to comfort her. But Holly would not be comforted. She spurned him, turned aside and left him hanging.

“I believe you experienced something treacherous. Of that there’s no doubt. Thieves out of Proudfoot, or so I hear.” Mer’s voice trailed off into stoutish mumblings and inaudible curses.

Holly did her best to tone down her whimpering. She had heard the rumors. There were many, many rumors, ranging from the mundane to the extreme.

Indeed, “thieves out of Proudfoot” was one of the more sensible speculations.

“Ya know,” some folks said, “sometimes them bog lights is swamp gas and sometimes they’s wicked spirits.” For all Holly knew, there might have been some truth to that one.

“The Numbit boy went mad and ran away. He’s always been a little off. The others got lost trying to find him.” That one, at least, was quickly set straight by Mrs. Numbit, proud owner of the Flipside rumor mill, along with her husband. No one dared say “He got so hungry he ates them” to her face. Mrs. Numbit was always great that way. She pushes her nose right into people’s business and gets the better of them. Holly received more support from the Numbit family than she ever got at home. And when hurtful whispers arose out of Proudfoot about Holly’s upbringing, Mrs. Numbit was there to put a stop to it.

Holly tried not to think of poor Jory. Jory was young, and good, and charming and handsome and brave.
Was
. She never got a good look at the body that was found. She was glad for that. Though the corpse was mangled beyond recognition, the crew had been able to surmise it was that of the young guard. Shredded remnants of a once dapper uniform, found scattered in the near vicinity, made the identification certain.

It had been two days since the disappearance of her friends. Determined to do whatever she could to find them, Holly had insisted on joining the search crew during the day. It was tiresome recanting the events to official, after official, after official as volunteers rotated on and off the job. None of them fully believed her. And she didn’t like the looks they gave her. Some offered pitiful stares; some looked at her as though she’d gone mad. Others, she thought, glanced and pointed as they conspired with one another, whispering that she was holding something back and that her version of events had been falsified, or that she was purposely leading them astray.
Let them think what they want. They’re just stupid.
All these things she imagined as she meandered about the site.

Even Fyorn had heard the news and showed up to help. He was a marvel to behold in his tall helm and leather armor, with an impressive sword strapped over one shoulder as if he expected to do battle. As out of place as he appeared, Fyorn at least had believed her, Holly was sure of it. He’d gone out with the boggers in their small watercrafts and even down under with the divers where Bobbin was last seen.

The woodsman was up the trail a ways at the moment, pointing across the bog waters as he conversed with volunteers in his mild Elderkin accent. He insisted there was a trail in the grasses they could follow, if they looked hard enough. The boggers were skeptical.

“There are two distinct trails,” he said, pointing into the bog, “but they break off out that way… there and there.” Fyorn’s hand chopped at the air in one direction and then the other. The outdoorsmen continued on about that topic for some time.

Rumor had it that Nud’s grandfather had immediately set out to join the search when he heard the news. “Not again,” he was heard saying, as he gathered his hat and cane.

Mayor Undle delivered the ill tidings personally, and had assured the aging Pip that everything possible was being done to find the missing teens. “Then why are you here?” he had said to the mayor, “You should be out there too.”

Despite Undle’s insistence that he stay in bed, while still in his night robe Paplov shushed the mayor and stormed out of his hut. He collapsed before even reaching the gate, far too ill to exert himself.

Such information had come to Holly through eavesdropping – an activity she would never have even considered were it not for the spotter’s cloak and the prevailing circumstances. In the course of her information gathering, Holly learned many other useful and interesting things about Webfooters, some of which were exceedingly private and unsettling.

One of the councillors had a mistress and another, Mrello, accepted bribes; a group of Stouts from the Hills (not Gariff’s clan) were charging double the fair price to straighten out a sinking building that they built purposely deficient years earlier and, to make matters worse, they were cutting corners. As a server at the Flipside, Holly was used to overhearing such talk and, for the most part, looked the other way or, on occasion, might drop just the right hint to a patron she sympathized with. But with the power of wild elderkin camouflage, she found darker secrets too, either too disturbing or too damaging to repeat.

Holly Hopkins paused by the tree where she had donned her cloak, searching for signs of the bog queen’s passing. There was nothing. Up ahead she could see Gariff and his father talking with Pip divers near the last known location of Nud and Kabor.

The events of that dreadful day consumed Holly.
It was dark and we were divided.
The witches planned it.
Where are my friends? What am I
missing?

*

Holly grew frantic when she saw the hag pull Kabor and Nud underwater. She couldn’t believe what she saw, what she thought she saw. Her dear friends just gave up without a struggle.
The hag has them by a spell,
she thought.
They won’t take me like that
, she assured herself.

Gariff fought on relentlessly. Hopeless or not, he would never give in – stubborn and Stout to the bone he was. Pushed under repeatedly, arms flailing, he kept bobbing back up for air. He desperately tried to land a punch, grabbing and pulling at anything he could get his hands on. Even when underwater, Holly could hear his muffled grunts of determination – overtaken, but not yet beaten.

The parrot hag had been the one to chase Holly down. She tackled the serving girl and pulled her into the bog water. The Pip’s wide feet were all that kept her from sinking into the moss.

“Let me go you stupid witch!” cried Holly.

She scratched at the wretch’s face. The hag didn’t seem to notice, or care, and squealed in delight as she forced Holly’s head down with ease, like a mother dunking a stubborn child in the bathtub – except the hag held her there.

On the brink of suffocation, and without known cause or warning, the parrot hag relaxed her grip. Holly pushed and wriggled her way above the waterline. She gulped for air too soon and took in a mouthful of the quaggy water, and heard a voice over the sounds of her own sputtering – a singing voice, and the source of the hag’s hesitation. It was not a change of heart or feeling of pity that saved her; it was Bobbin. At the Flipside, the baker boy sang all the while when preparing food. Apparently, he did the same when seeking a hag’s attention.

The still air echoed with his taunting. He stood at the trailside on a patch of moss, waving his arms and mocking them. He explained by melody exactly how they became so ugly, and why they had to steal children – “because no man would ever have them.” Abruptly, he stopped, and pulled something out of his pocket.

“Na-na-na-na-na… I-have-your-sparkle-stone.” The immature Pip wiggled his mid-section foolishly and pointed at the hag that held Holly in her wiry grasp.

He plugged his nose. “You-oo-oo sti-ink… bog breath!” Then Bobbin lifted one hand high above his head, with the palm opened just enough to reveal that he held a stone there, obscured by the dim light and completely unrecognizable at a distance. It was not even flashing.

“Want a kiss?” said the parrot hag.

“Come and get it you dirty old bag of weeds… I-know-you-want-it.”

The dim-witted parrot hag shook her head twice, dropped all that she was doing and looked around. She seemed confused, as though she did not know where she was.

Then she glared back at Bobbin, fixated on the stone he held. A sudden crazed look came over her. The blank, stupid expression, ever present on her face, was ripped away by maniacal rage. The hunched-in hag noted the change and scolded her for it.

“No, no! Stay! Stay!” she spat. “Lose them both, you will. Stuu—pid.”

Bobbin noted the shift in character as well, and in the way that he stumbled back there was a hint of lost nerve. He carefully shuffled farther out onto the floating moss, to the very edge of the water.

But the hag who was no longer a mere parrot had set her sights on Bobbin. She must have taken his subtle retreat as a sign of weakness. Immediately, she let go of Holly and bounded towards the uncertain Bobbin like a wolf on a scared rabbit. A scared, pudgy rabbit. And a really ugly wolf.

In the time taken to snap at her disobedient accomplice, the hunched-in hag had turned her attention away from the struggling Stout. That was a mistake. Gariff had been pushed around, dragged underwater and was short on breath, but he was determined like no other.

Taking full advantage of the distraction orchestrated by Bobbin, the burly Stout ducked under the hunched-in hag and lifted her right up out of the water. She gurgled and writhed and squirmed in protest, and it wasn’t long before she had twisted her way back down. But Gariff had gained a few steps towards the trail, tethered as he was to her. It was all he needed to gain solid footing.

Holly, free at last, gasped, coughed and spat out bog water as eloquently as her nemesis. With one hand beating on her chest, she cleared her throat and called out.

“No Bobbin! What are you doing?”

But it was too late to change the sequence of events the he had initiated. The parrot hag ignored her master, took the bait and closed in on the gentle Pip with alarming vigor.

“Catch me if you can!” Bobbin squealed, just before hitting the water in a ripping dive. The adept swimmer propelled himself under with the grace of a bullfrog. In the blink of an eye, only the slowly rising depression in the moss and wide ripples in the water betrayed that he was ever there. Holly staggered to shore, hunched over and gagging.

The parrot hag screeched and plunged in after Bobbin, a tangled mess of flowing grass and flailing limbs. As far as Holly could tell, no one was looking when she turned her cloak inside out. Just before closing the hood, she glared at the hideous leader, still battling Gariff.

The unmovable Stout had his heels dug in, braced for a wrestle. And when the hunched-in hag turned back to him, with firm quickness Gariff diverted her grapple, and when she fell, with solid leverage he lifted her right up out of the water again. In the air, she was off balance.

“Uggh!” she screeched, unable to contain her frustration. Gariff used the hag’s own tether on him to keep her twisting, writhing body in check. But before he could take full advantage of the situation, more tendrils wrapped around his face and neck, even creeping inside his mouth, his ears, and his nose. She would have him suffocate, above or below the boggy water. She was determined to have her way.