Ch: 122 Eye Of The Tiger
“So all night long and it’s… and it’s still… you know… still.” Gary mumbled to Tawny, in her room. He fidgeted with his robe, struggling to keep it closed, despite it being rather loose. He twitched awkwardly, while shifting from red, into a deep crimson that looked unhealthy.
“I assume you tried all the… usual methods?” She smiled pleasantly and enjoyed her profession so very, very much. “I can also assume you attempted to… alleviate his condition as well…?” The young, golden healer asked Shai, with calm, professional interest.
“An truth be told… I hae some… discomfort as well, in me nethers. I did ride this boy til I thought me hips would shatter an still…” She eyed him hungrily and licked her lips.
“Maybe we just need to… try again…” Gary mumbled quietly, his deep blazing embarrassment had been supplanted by a pink flush of excitement and arousal.
“This seems a magical issue, more than a physical one… did your… guests… have any input on this last night?”
The young healer fanned the air, as though to disperse a swarm of midges. “Let’s get out in the fresh air first… your energy is… distracting.” She led them out into the garden, to the private pool and motioned for Shai to summon a door.
“Now, did ‘Ducky, or your spider friend have any insights on this?” She asked firmly, once they were alone and soaking properly. She turned to confront her patients, after closing the door firmly. They were entirely too close together and getting closer fast.
“Ahh! No canoodling! Gary, over by the waterfall, Shai, stay near the jasmine vines.”
Properly spaced out, they looked wretchedly embarrassed, at least Gary did, ashamed too. Shai just seemed distracted and annoyed.
“We dinnae see them last night… even wi nae pollen, we did sleep little and dreamt not at all.” A sharp look from the healer kept the pair from scooting back together.
“You seem fit to travel, we shall see what today brings, perhaps the effect will diminish as we ride…” Both of them were shaking their heads in denial as she spoke.
“I kinnae sit a saddle… walking be a trial even, things do… collide and rub taegether…” Shai muttered, finding some embarrassment to add to Gary’s raging bonfire of shame.
“I can’t even put on pants, they are all… snug. Don’t look at it! Gods…” He grumbled and complained incoherently, while staring at the lovely redhead who wouldn’t stop smiling at him in that way.
#
Tawny shut the door behind herself with a sigh of surrender. “We will be unlikely to travel much today, those two are nearly incapacitated.”
The gathered crew looked exhausted, especially Ivy and Tallum, they seemed worn through and ragged.
“We aren’t in much better shape, that was deeply weird and more than a little sexy.”
Khan, Luna, Becky and the kids strolled into the common room looking fresh and rested, impressively so.
“You lot slept through that noise? The damn music never stopped, all night!” Herlick demanded, backed up by Bannock and Nara.
“We stayed over with uncle Khan and aunties Luna and Annie!” Amy chirped happily, as she scooped up an instrument off the sofa. “Becky said we should… Oh my uke! Rio, your drum’s here too!”
Her rapid fire chatter rattled and buzzed against the tired nerves of the sleepless band, scattering them around the room.
Wilford collected the tenor Uke he had been practicing with lately and sank onto the rug by the fire, happily thumping away.
Becky looked pleased with herself, grinning and smirking at Dannyl in particular. “I told you we had room for you. I left my harp in the workshop for a reason, the same reason I stashed the kids’ instruments too.”
She got to work in the kitchen, starting breakfast with Khan and Luna, smiling all the while. “Learn to recognize the warning signs…” She announced to no one in particular, while the instruments on the walls started up again. “Breakfast in the garden kids… it’s gonna be a weird day.”
#
When the sheepish and exhausted duo finally appeared, they were disheveled and mussed, despite just exiting the bath. They attacked the kitchen, devouring anything edible that came to hand.
When they finished consuming balls of cold rice with leftover sausages, Gary and Shai swept the kids into a corner of the common room, leaving them under Tallum and Dannyl’s supervision for lessons.
The pair cornered Becky in the stable, looking tired and sore, but happy.
“We do greatly love ye and appreciate all that ye do fer the little ones, my love.” Shai began, hugging her close in the warm, hay scented barn.
“We keep dumping our responsibilities on you and you always come through, Becks.” Gary pressed in on them, smooshing her in the best way. “It’s my fault, all of this, but we… I couldn’t handle all this without you.” He mumbled softly. “I owe you so much, both of you…”
“We be having some emotional disruptions, but tis true, we do rely on thee too much love. There be a debt there we kinnae ever repay.” Shai and Gary mauled the poor girl terribly, before falling asleep in a pile of bedding straw.
While they snored and disrupted Annies peaceful abode, Becky slipped away to join Liam’s herbal medicine lessons with Tawny and the kids.
Vreek followed along, providing local expertise. Gary usually touched the local plants, to somehow learn their names and a rough idea of their properties. Today, they gathered known herbs and fungi from the forest, swarming over the meadows with happy chatter.
“Amy, slow down! Wilford, get out of that creek! Rio, send master Calloway home now, it’s not music lesson time.” Becky sang to her little charges, happily skipping over the mossy turf. Liam and Amy stayed with the high priestess, helping collect fiddle head ferns and tender cockleburr vines. Tawny was gathering mushrooms with Rio and Wilford, Khan and Luna were ‘supervising’, while the rest were back at home, sleeping.
They wandered about a half mile over the undulating hummocks and creeks, searching out the marvelous things hidden among the glistening dew drops and misty glades.
“My storage pockets are pretty full. Liam, how are you?” Becky called across a shady meadow.
“Full up, I have a ten pound sack of mixed tubers and roots to donkey back the hard way.” All three little ones had long since abandoned actually collecting herbs, but their small baskets held some interesting things anyway.
“Lets head back, everybody should be recovered now.” Liam took Tawny by the hand and started prancing back, to the sound of Rio’s drums.
They came skipping back from the fantastical forest of sparkling brooks and rainbow glinting dewshine, happy and content with their haul of goodies…
To a compound that was… ‘surrounded’ would be too dramatic, there were a few undead around, displaying an unpleasant interest in the place.
“Oh, that’s nasty.” Luna moaned, drawing her bow.
“Hold on there, remember who’s in there… they could be friendly…” Becky called out.
“They have never cared a whit for living beings… only your friend seems to draw their attention.” Vreek agreed quietly.
While they spoke, the gate opened, Gary stood there, piping on his mad little whistle. Somehow, even from more than eighty yards away, the tiny nightmare sounded terribly close and intimate, as it screeched and wailed in sweet, spine tingling sounds of deepest terror and joy.
The several spirits and shambling horrors perked up and bustled to the gate. They strolled inside, in hideous mockery of friends come calling.
Gary waved at the approaching foragers, before darting inside after his ‘guests’.
They rode through the gate into a scene of typical Gary, which is to say, gentle madness. A new pool had formed, smaller and set in the runoff channel, creating a swirling vortex, before exiting into the local river. His chorus line of dreadful shades and zombies were slowly stepping in, one after the other.
Each one dispersed and dissolved, releasing a fat black bee, which buzzed over to a familiar ceramic crock and vanished inside, slipping through the terracotta lid.
They watched the remaining few disappear in silence, when the last bee bumbled off to the strange crock, Becky had enough.
“A ghost hive? Does Shai know about this? Isn’t that the weird crock from over the fireplace? The one you took to Julius’ party?” She jabbed her finger into his gut with each question, driving him back towards his weird clay jar.
“It’s a phylactery, a canopic jar, a spirit trap to capture any stray fragments of my essence or soul that might wander off.” Gary stammered, in full retreat from his tiny aggressor. “Ghost hives though… I kinda already am one…”
“Creepy, super creepy. Does Shai know what you’re doing?” She snapped.
He smiled blissfully, with the kind of look on his face that suggested he had noodly legs and shaky hips. “Guys, could you take the kids inside, while Becky yells at me?” He asked sweetly. “Shai’s making sticky rice with mango and grilled bananas…”
“Wash up, an ye hae finished playing wi yer dead friends boy… an bring me my babes! Slackwitted churls, tae leave me wee ones out in the cold…” Shai swept out and collected her strays, looking just as happily exhausted as her man.
“You two are just awful.” Becky complained happily, while hugging her sister close. “Is it true about the sticky rice?”
“Aye, an toasted webnuts tae go on top, if ye be good tae me poor foolish boy. He does try so hard…”
#
“Your ghost and zombie problem picked up and became a serious issue about midsummer right?” Vreek nodded at the rambling lunatic. It’s always good to humor the moontouched.
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“That’s when I got here. I’ve been slowly dissolving and reforming on a spiritual level since I got here, it’s all very complicated…” He grinned and sat back on the sofa with his guitar, strumming idle chords.
“All those pieces had to wash up somewhere, I guess a good number of them showed up here for some reason.”
He rolled up his sleeve with a smile, showing his odd tattoo of a sugar wasp queen and her hexagonal wax lattice. Now most of the cells were filled with golden honey, so fresh and wet looking; it seemed too real to be ink and skin.
“I’m feeling more together than I have in a long time, poor Shai doesn’t know what to do with me.”
“I do ken exactly what tae do wi thee boy… An we soak in the bath a mite, I’ll show thee again…” Shai danced by, with her tasty coconut and fruit creation and sweet swaying hips.
#
Liam had a burgeoning gift with plant life and herbal medicines, together the pair were working on something truly awful smelling down ‘in the lab’ among Gary’s bubbling vats and carboys.
Tawny was supervising from a discrete distance, while interrogating Liam’s poor mad brother who was collapsed on a sofa, with a gently snoring Shai. “Tell me about this ‘soul jar’ thing… it smacks of necromancy.” Bannock and Herlick nodded from their seats nearby.
“It is necromancy, but it’ll only work on someone like me and it only does one thing. It draws in and captures fragments of the soul named on the lid, allowing them to gradually reattach to that soul.” He shrugged and watched Liam stir his kettle of vile purple goo.
“Normal souls shed a fragment here and there, not nearly enough to make any difference to a healthy entity… I kinda shed a lot and I’m kinda infectious, so in a way, I’m haunting these ghosts and zombies.” The poor fool seemed entertained by whatever nightmare revenants his soul was animating, somewhere out in the woods and marshes.
“But how did fragments of you wind up way out here? That seems very strange.” Tawny asked, even more exasperated and cranky from lack of sleep.
“The winds, they do blow high, the winds, they do blow low… they toss my petticoats to and fro…” He sang sweetly, winking at her in a detestable display of cheek.
“Go take a nap.” He shooed Liam and Tawny away, hissing at them as though they were stray kitties in his kitchen. “By morning I should be absolutely insufferable, there’s a half dozen more outside now.”
He dropped a wooden lid on the reeking cauldron of violet ooze with a sigh. “That needs to mellow overnight.”
“What is that? It smells like… overripe fruit and rotten flowers?” Herlick demanded, holding her nose and looking grumpy.
“Yeah, it stinks now, that should go away overnight… you ok? You seem… on edge.” Gary gripped the short stocky knight by the shoulder and gave her a gentle jostle.
“I’m fine, just need fresh air.” She turned and went upstairs, trying and failing to conceal her rigid posture and sour mood.
Bannock swatted him on the shoulder in a comradely way as they followed her up into the common room. The lanky knight spoke softly in the stairwell for a moment.
“She will be fine, Herlick is a very… physical being. She responded poorly to the… vibe? Last night and today. Too much sexually charged music.”
“Who was playing?” He asked, smiling and looking for the naughty musicians.
“You and the girl were, mooncalf…” Khan swept in and bustled Bannock out into the common room, ending up all the way over at the bar.
Luna grabbed Gary and Shai, dragging them in another direction. “Yes, very good to see you moving again, let’s get those nasty dead things cleared away, shall we?” The one eyed warrior shoved and dragged the much larger pair out into the garden, smiling wide.
#
“They aren't exactly ghosts and zombies… The physical entities, they seem to rot and decay, but it’s all shadow stuff. Any physical object they bump into, shreds them away until there’s nothing left.”
Gary seemed to be enjoying his task, lecturing on undead habits while he shepherded the wights and haunts into his outer pool.
They watched one bumble and thrash in a small blackberry bramble, emerging as a barely intact skeleton.
“If undisturbed, he would regenerate slowly and grow a new zombie body… as long as there is enough left. The shades, sunlight dissolves and burns them away slowly, but in darkness they regenerate the same way.”
“Gross… how many of these things are out there?” Becky demanded, from a good distance away.
“I expect a few dozen are still wandering this way. I dunno how far away they can sense me, I suspect quite a ways…” As the raggedy skeleton tumbled into the pool, the madman dusted off his palms like a workman satisfied with his day’s labor and smiled.
“Tomorrow, into the wilds and nearer our mysterious keep… exciting stuff!” He leaned close to Becky and whispered. “Dungeon crawl…”
#
Marduk sighed as only a god can, it lasted a good six minutes of slow, steady exhalation. “Your essence, infesting undead things and wandering the fringe, from some ‘keep in the wilds’... I’m going to just assume that you are correct, because that really sounds like you.”
“Now, now, lord Marduk, Gary is doing his best. Look how much the island has grown! A whole new section of orchards sprang up just last night.” Thirp was over the moon with excitement.
The honey crock under his eaves was almost half full, and a small patch of well maintained orchard graced a new section of land, inside his expanding garden wall. The starlight was brighter everywhere, while all his shadows were deeper.
The runoff stream from the baths was larger and stronger too, buffering the kids’ islands from his unpredictable energies and disturbances. All three little ones were in Becky’s playhouse with her, giggling quietly, while Gary, Shai and the gods discussed ‘grownup stuff’.
He lounged on a lawn chair with Shai in his lap, snuggled in close. They watched the ersatz bugs and butterflies cavorting among the big black bees for a while. They spent a timeless few minutes just enjoying the sounds and smells, until the pair drifted off to normal sleep together.
“The undead thing really gets me… can’t we do… something about that?” Marduk griped to the spider demigoddess.
“He will either find a solution, or embrace his nature, we can only watch and aid him where we may. He walks a very strange path, though not alone.” Thirp sang softly. “Let’s go play with the kids, you’ll feel better.”
#
At dawn, Gary and Shai were just coming up from the workshop, all smiles and cheery greetings for the gang.
“Ok! Back to it! Who’s ready to eat up the miles?”
“All right ya big goof, we get it. Food first, I hope Shai did the cooking…” Dannyl had a mouth on him after a full night’s sleep.
The whole crew was rolling and riding down the road before the sun finished burning off the fog, but it was still a late start.
“Is it always so foggy and misty here? I like it!” Amy chirped happily, riding up on the driver’s bench with Gary.
“Yes kitten, the fog rises most every evening in spring and autumn, in winter, seldom are mornings clear. I love the way it tickles my whiskers…” Vreek smiled and purred softly, still wearing his rain cloak in the wet and chill. “I shall steal this garment from you Gary human… and perhaps another for Cheri…”
“Sure, no problem… what’s that, up ahead?” Gary asked softly, pointing to a disturbance in the misty distance.
“That is the actual edge of human lands, the utter fringe. Beyond that, War and Order become less immediate and present. None know why the fog swirls and moves so at the edge.”
He shifted comfortably in his cloak and stroked his pony’s ears, with a contented sigh from both cat and equine.
“I have not ridden the wilds in a very long time, let us see what there is to see.. Shall we?”
Less than a mile from their former camp, shreds and sheets of swirling, disturbed mist gathered and dispersed along an endless, invisible borderline stretching off out of sight in either direction.
No physical marker or monument stood watch at the edge of man’s domains, just a length of road in slightly worse repair, running off into the redwoods and wet forest.
They rode along, watching the trees and forest with wary interest. Several times Liam or Khan caught and scolded Gary for hopping off his bike to touch some plant or fungus by the roadside.
“But… new stuff…” He complained lamely, when dressed down for breaking formation.
“Suck it up, this is not a pleasure trip, things appear in these woodlands, often and unpredictably.” Khan barked, with Liam, Luna, Tawny and Shai nodding in agreement.
“Point taken, I’ll focus up… What are the odds something shows up?” He mumbled sheepishly while he got his stick horse moving again.
“Something dangerous, pretty low odds, something we can’t handle…” He shrugged and shook his head. “Playing the odds is a fool’s game, you can’t afford to lose, boy.” The mustachioed veteran shot a significant look at the bright blue cart and pony rig.
The morning ride was pleasant nonetheless, with a wide, well maintained road and warm spring sunshine raining down.
“Just about a mile from here, we will leave the road, and head into the hills and bogs, your cart will become a liability there.” Vreek announced. I assume you have some way of…” He shrugged eloquently.
“Yeah, I got that, stop for lunch?” The musician seemed even more oddly upbeat since crossing the fringe, while several of the others seemed less enthused.
Liam joined Gary in his ebullient mood, even dragging Tawny into the mad couple’s house conjuring dance. Soon all three little ones and a reluctant Becky were doing a spirited rendition of ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ along with a chorus of wildlife.
“Out here, War is silent, even more so than when Knowledge and Joy first pushed him into a corner of my mind.” The young warrior cooed from Tawny’s arms.
“I wonder…” Gary mumbled from nearby, buried under his squirming, wriggling kids. “The feeling is less like something is gone, than something else is… not watching, but lurking, just out of sight. A presence so faint it seems…” He shrugged and grinned. “It doesn’t feel creepy, just different.”
After lunch, Ivy had Rio, riding in front of her, snuggled inside her cloak and drumming idly on his bongos. Tawny had Wilford on Magnus and Becky took Amy on her lap, astride Sandi.
The troop rode out the gate as the house vanished, storing the cart inside the mad boy somehow; along with all that other stuff and a whole inn.
“That still boggles my mind…” Luna whispered as they rode away from the vanishing home. “Where does it all go?”
“I asked the kids about that once, they say he has an island in a sea of nightmares, somewhere beyond the waking world… some questions are best left unanswered.” Khan’s muttered reply shed little light on the matter.
“Everyone I’ve met with a dimensional storage gift is… odd, some have been outright weird. Remember Olaf and his bag of endless raisins?”
“Gods, I forgot about that loon… everything had some kind of dried fruit in it, even the coffee.” She laughed ruefully. “All those monsters, all that danger, but I only remember the awful meals from that mission. Is he still alive?”
“Yeah, he’s a caravan outfitter in Port Sunderland now, specializing in trail rations.” That made her laugh quietly, which made the rabbit in her tattoo seem to sit up and look around. He loved that little bunny.
#
Their trail split off from the road in a small lowland meadow. Their path was little more than a game trail leading over a low hill and off into the wilds.
Vreek and Luna took the lead, on foot, roaming through the woodlands ahead, scouting for troubles. They slipped in and out of the brush and woods, almost invisible even if you knew where and when to look.
Tallum rode at the fore with Dannyl, clearing brush with Shai’s murder shovel and Tallum’s enormous bill hook, fresh from the workshop. They worked on foot, with the others riding slowly as they widened the path, lopping off intruding boughs and cutting brambles.
Progress was pretty slow, they spent most of the time walking the horses and ponies, while the kids rode. During Gary and Shai’s turn at cutting the trail, Vreek returned through the brush, looking pleased.
“The woods open up soon, then we will ride on open moorlands… do not wander, there are many bogs and hidden mires off the traveled paths. Perhaps we sight the keep before nightfall.”
Three or four times throughout the day, they were forced to pause, while Gary fished out his ‘canopic jar’ and allowed a spirit to sink into his shadow. Each big, fat, bumblebee flew right into the jar and vanished, slipping right through the clay stopper.
“What happens if that jar gets full? Will it burst, sending ghost wasps everywhere?” Herlick asked mildly, as he stuffed it away for the second time.
“They don’t have physical mass, so no, it won’t ever fill up. If it breaks, I would probably get a fatal case of blueballs. I’m working on something in that vein already.” He winked and smiled madly. “Shh… nobody can know about the ‘Sexbomb’, that’s still a secret.”
Herlick flushed a little, turning her smiling cheeks a little darker. “I like you kid, but you are insane.” She rejoined the formation smiling and shaking her head. “Crazy, kid said ‘Sexbomb’ with a straight face…” She whispered to a confused Bannock.
“Considering some of the…” The tall knight coughed in discrete and well mannered embarrassment. “...clothing I have seen in this company…” Her lanky friend’s discomfort was too delicious to resist.
Herlick smiled and rode a little closer. “I’ve seen some of it too, ‘lingerie’ he calls it… I may have even ordered a few things… your brother is in for a rough wedding night…” Her raucous and cruel laugh rang out in the damp, dripping forest, shaking dew drops from the leaves.
An hour later, the trees began to thin, as they left the towering giant sequoias behind. Alder and willows were scattered widely, along with clumps of white oak, cypress and tulip trees. Bracken ferns, sedge and thistle began to dominate the understory of the low, marshy region.
Travel became both swift and more difficult down among the thorny, prickly tangles. Frequently, they would dismount to chop an opening in a bramble of thorny vines, cross a muddy stream and chop their way back out, through more berry canes, thistles and tangled woodland nuisances.
Innumerable brooks and streams crossed the land, joining and dividing in a wild tangle of wet and muddy fens, swamps and bogs.
They encamped in late afternoon, on a low mound rising from the boggy moors. Watching the sun fall and the mist rise from the bath was both beautiful and slightly sad, as fireflies and lightning bugs began their dance in the fog.
The runoff from their home splashed merrily into a rocky pool, joining a stream that cut by the foot of their little hill. Gary left that area outside his wards, with his crock sitting on a stool beside the new waterfall.
Throughout the evening and night, occasionally a bee would buzz up from the low cliff and swoop into the jar, signifying another shade or husk taking its leave.
Upstream, a mile or so away, an actual hill rose from the soggy plain, with hints of worked stone visible even from so far off.
“Should we worry about camping here? I feel a bit exposed like this.” Dannyl muttered to Khan and Vreek in the common room.
“Travelers camp here with some frequency… as we measure such things in the wilds. None has reported being disturbed. I once spent three weeks here, hunting a glowbug, gone monster. No denizens of that keep appeared.” Vreek answered, with a fond smile.
“I asked Cheri to marry me after that hunt. She uses the bug’s ass section to light our home.”
“That was sweet, right up until the bugbutt lamp. Mood killer buddy.” Gary sang, once more appearing from nowhere, startling the pair.
“Garree! Do you wanna throw beans?!” Vreek hissed raising his hands aggressively. “I am a hunter, if you startle me, I may just scratch you.”
“Dude, did you just threaten to ‘throw beans’? That’s adorable…” The lunatic scampered off, to do some mischief somewhere, singing over a savage guitar riff.
Rising up, back on the street
Did my time, took my chances…
Went the distance, now I'm back on my feet
Just a man and his will to survive!
“Don’t ask, just let him be…” Khan warned the confused cat man. “Some answers are best unknown.”
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