CHAPTER EIGHT
Tom had been lagging behind, and when the swamp hog confronted Jane, he stopped walking and watched the hog and knew that he was going to help Jane somehow. It seemed like an impossible situation. The swamp hog was huge. Tom felt this might be the end of the journey and the end of Jane’s life.
Before he had a chance to reflect on his life and the imminence of his death, a hand clamped his mouth. The hand stank and tasted vile against Tom’s lips. He twisted his head to get the stinking hand away from his mouth, but the hand stayed powerfully clamped. He got lifted by a pair of strong little arms and shoved through a door into the tree trunk. The door was shaped and coloured the same as the tree bark, and had been invisible until it was open. Tom banged his head on the way through.
Inside, Tom found himself in a warehouse carved into the centre of the tree. There were barrels stacked along a wall, each barrel dark and sticky with honey. Across the far wall were two wagons with metal wheels sitting on a rail line that ran from a timber platform into the wall of the tree, where a tunnel had been carved just a little larger than the width of the wagons.
The hand over Tom’s mouth was released. A dwarf stepped into view, a nuggety little fellow with a terrible scowl and arms bunched up in a threatening manner. He wore dirty pants with holes and rips. His face was dominated by his nose which looked like a dropped pudding.
Another dwarf came into view, this one even hairier than the first. He had so much hair you could mistake him for a little bear if he wasn’t dressed like a person. This one wore a leather tunic and leather pants, and the leather sat on him tight, as though he had got dressed a few years earlier then got fat inside his clothing. Both dwarves wore iron helmets
Now a man stepped into view.
This man wasn’t much taller than a dwarf, and he was skinny. He looked like a primary school lad, yet he had the face of a man. He wore the most colourful clothing Tom had seen since that magician had turned up to his school last year in order to pull a dove out of a top hat. This man wore a purple coat and an egg-yolk yellow shirt with a design of purple peacocks. His pants were a shamrock green. He had on an orange top hat and a stripy bow tie. He was dapper, and whimsical, but when he smiled from beneath a moustache with curled up ends, Tom knew he was dangerous. A bow and a quiver of arrows were slung across his back.
He walked lightly, almost dancing, and when he stopped in front of Tom he put his hands together before his pelvis, fingers splayed, and he pointed his index fingers at Tom.
‘At last .. Elion.’
Tom said, ‘Who are you?’
‘Of course … of course you don’t remember me. Who am I to be remembered? We only met once, but that time you were so impressed by my knowledge of the southern realm I thought you would remember me. I am Silas Fox … but everybody calls me Fox.’
The dapper man known as Silas Fox beamed proudly. Then he asked:
‘Who is that female we left out on the wooden walkway?’
‘Why … what are you going to do to her?’
‘The swamp hogs will get her,’ said one of the dwarves, the hairy one that looked like a bear.
‘The hogs will make her fly,’ said the other dwarf. This dwarf
Silas Fox furrowed his brow, and he shook his head and said, ‘Is this girl someone close to you then?’
‘Not really,’ said Tom. 'We just met.'
‘Well that is okay then.’
The little man smiled. Whatever was going to happen to Jane made this little man happy
The hairy dwarf crossed his arms over his chest and spoke with pride.
‘We captured a couple of swamp hogs and brought them up here. It wasn’t easy.’
‘I captured the hogs,’ said Fox. ‘You two little slabs of butter had nothing to do with it.’
Tom suddenly started toward the door, but Fox turned quickly and slammed the door shut. He moved with amazing speed with his coat sweeping out like a magician's cloak. His feet moved like a dancer's feet. The door clicked into place with a sound of resolution.
Fox turned back to Tom and waggled a finger in Tom’s face, as though Tom was a naughty little boy.
‘You must be obedient.’
‘One of the dwarves said, ‘Elion still thinks he is too good for us.’
Fox shook his head at Tom, leaned in conspiratorially and said, ‘The dwarves are an aberration.'
‘Feck off,’ said the dwarf with the pudding nose, bunching his little fists.
Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!
Fox grinned at the dwarf, while adjusting his bow tie.
‘‘Let’s take the wagon,’ said the hairy dwarf and he stepped around a crate and walked toward the railway line and the wagons. His little bottom bumped up and down.
‘Stop you little rotter,’ commanded Fox. ‘I take my seat, Elion takes his seat, then you two little bricks get in last.’
The hairy dwarf stopped as though frozen, one hand scissored up into the air, and the other hand behind him, holding the pose in a mocking way.
‘First, can we check on Jane,’ said Tom.
Fox nodded like this was a reasonable request, but an instant later he had a bow in his hands with an arrow strung.
‘Just to be clear,’ said Fox. ‘You are now my prisoner.’
After a tense moment Tom gave one small nod, and said, 'I guess we aren't going to check on Jane.'
Fox put away his weapon and stepped up to the wagon.
Dirt and black soot encrusted the first wagon, and the bands of metal that bound the wooden structure together held large flakes of rust. The second wagon, however, had been constructed of white timber with golden bands, and egg-shaped lamps on each corner. It was a wagon fit for royalty.
Fox brought out a kerchief from a pocket in his coat and bent over the front wagon and placed the kerchief on a wooden seat. He brought out another handkerchief and wiped his nose, and he coughed politely into his hands, then stepped into the wagon and carefully seated himself. He worked hard not to touch his fancy clothing against any part of the wagon
He said, ‘Dwarves ... get your wormy little selves into action and bring Elion to the wagon. I want to reach Rivertown before dark. ’
The hairy dwarf said, ‘How the stonehell were we ever scared of Elion?’
‘Shut it dwarf,’ said Fox. ‘I don’t pay you for your commentary.’
The dwarves took Tom by the arms, one on each side, and they bundled him, boots drumming, to the wagon. They gave Tom an almighty shove, and tripped and fell onto the wagon floor, banging his knees. His right hip bumped Fox’s knee.
Fox yelled at the dwarves, 'Be careful.'
Tom got himself up off the wagon floor and sat on a wooden bench beside Fox, and the dwarves climbed in and sat on the benches opposite.
‘A million rizers,' said the hairy dwarf.
The splodgy nose dwarf whacked Tom on the leg and said, 'The Emperor is going to pay us a million rizers for puny Elion.'
‘Enough money to set up a small mining operation,’ said the hairy dwarf.
‘Stop rattling your jaw and get this wagon moving,’ said Fox, and he took his hat off and held it on his lap.
‘Hang on to your breadbasket,’ said the hairy dwarf, and he took hold of a lever that came through the floor and clamped his thick little hand over the releasing mechanism. He thrust the lever to the wagon floor. With a rusting screech the wagon crept forward, its wheels clunk clunking, slowly accelerating. The dwarves braced against the wagon’s wooden walls, and they nodded their heads in unison, up and down in an excited rhythm.
Tom gripped his knees with his fingers, suspecting that this ride wasn’t going to be pleasant.
The wagon rolled out of the carved warehouse and into a curving tunnel where everything went black. A disembodied voice of one of the dwarves said, ‘Let’s hope we don’t crash.’
Fox yelled to be heard over the clunking of the wagon. ‘With any luck you will fall to your death, you ugly little rotter.’
The wagon accelerated through the tunnel, and with the G forces growing on him Tom wondered about the immensity of a tree capable of accommodating such a large piece of infrastructure. He brought a hand up to the key on the strap in front of his chest and he squeezed it through the fabric of his shirt, as though it were a good luck charm.
The wagon banged along with its wheels clattering metal on metal, and the wooden structure squealing, The centrifugal forces grew and the tunnel stayed black, and the dwarves laughed, and the wheels screeched, and the echo off the tunnel walls grew louder and increasingly horrendous. Faster and faster they went until with a neck whipping motion the wagon straightened and burst from inside the tree into the deep green light of Wisting Woods, hundreds of feet above the woodland ground.
At that moment Tom saw something that the dwarves and Fox missed: a swamp hog falling through the branches, its grey arms and legs pinwheeling. Although Tom was petrified of heights, this sudden, shocking image of the falling hog filled his mind in a way that made him forget about the sheer drop all around.
The wagon streaked through the giant woods, still gaining speed. The rail line banked left and right through the monster tree trunks. Moss hung like green waterfalls. Branches and ferns and leaves and large pumpkin flowers streaked past. Tom nearly had his head taken off by a vine.
Finally the track levelled off then, suddenly, they took a sharp turn up. Tom felt his spine puncturing the back of his skull. The wagon swooped up into an almost vertical climb, dropping speed until, on the verge of stopping, the wagon rolled over a cliff top onto a level plateau.
The wagon coasted at a gentle pace across the plateau and Tom realised that he was gripping the side of the wagon so tightly his knuckles had turned white. The rail lines were heading straight toward a sheer cliff. Tom looked up. The mountain climbed up to a snowline that disappeared into the clouds.
The wagon moved toward the cliff and Tom saw a tunnel entrance that grew larger until the wagon plunged into the darkness.
‘This is more like it,’ came the voice of the hairy dwarf.
The tunnel was long and straight and the wagon moved steadily.Tom clenched his fists into his lap and attempted to draw his legs up so they didn’t touch the bear-like dwarf seated opposite. The dwarf’s dirty leg had been bumping Tom’s leg ever since they had gotten into the wagon, and Tom was feeling squeamish.
The dwarves started talking in grunty, disembodied voices about the gold in this mountain. Now that they were getting a share of a million rizers they were going to come back and mine the gold in this exact spot.They knew a dwarf that knew a dwarf that had a map and a mining licence. By the time the wagon was halfway through the mountain the dwarves were talking about fabulous wealth.
Fox sighed with irritation, and finally told the dwarves to 'shut up'. The dwarves went silent for half a second then started blabbering again.
The tunnel seemed endless, but eventually they emerged from the tunnel onto a wooded slope with grizzled looking pines that were much smaller than those of the Wisting woods. Tom turned and looked up at the mountains where high above the snow was litten yellow by the setting sun.
Fox was also looking at Tom, and he was twisting the end of his moustache around his little finger. The wind blew across his face and bumped up against the orange hat that now rested back on his head. He said, ‘I wonder how Elion can get murdered, then go away for thirteen turns, only to come back in the body of a puny little boy?’