The Mountain that Slept Around and Other Stories
Copyright 2015 Gregory Miles Thomas
Published by Gregory Miles Thomas
Cover art “A Fantasy Town” by MikeinJapan [text added by author]
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode
The people and events depicted in these stories are fictional. Any resemblance to actual things, places, or people (living or dead) is purely coincidental.
Table of Contents
The Mountain that Slept Around
Ghost Stories
Just One or Two
The Banquet
Royalties
Up From Processing
About The Author
Connect with The Author
The Mountain That Slept Around
One sunny morning the citizens of Fairfield, Utah awoke to find a mountain where there had been no mountain before. It stood due north of the town, its first few pines indistinguishable from those of the city park. It was no hill, either, but a full-fledged mountain, white capped and glistening in the early morning sunlight. A cheerful torrent came bubbling down its side and, taking a sharp bend, wove through the town’s center and out into the plain where a slow, brown, meandering creek used to flow. They gathered in the streets and stared at it in amazement. None of them could recall ever having seen a mountain there before.
“Where do you suppose it came from?” asked one citizen.
“Don’t be absurd. Things like that don’t just come and go,” replied another. “It must have been there all the time. We...we just didn’t notice it.”
That became the official explanation: that the townspeople simply hadn’t noticed the presence of it for lo these many years, but now, being ready, they had discovered it.
Oddly, no one could remember what used to occupy the spot. Try as they might, they could think of nothing that belonged there in its place. That was further evidence that it had been there all the time.
However, two problems immediately presented themselves. First, no one could think of the name of the mountain.
“That’s silly,” said the Mayor. “If it has been here all along, it must have a name. What’s it called?”
But no one could answer.
“Well, who was its discoverer?”
They tried to determine who was the first person to see it that morning, but there were several claimants, and none could outdo the other, so they didn’t have a clear cut discoverer to name it after. They tried looking at it from several different angles to see if its shape suggested any likely names. No luck there, either, though “Pointy” was briefly considered and dismissed as undignified. They finally named it after the town and, as the fiction that it had always been there took firmer root, it came to be said that the town, in fact, was named after the mountain.
“Then why is it Fair field?” someone would ask.
“The field is here at the bottom. The mountain led us to it...” offered someone tentatively. They all looked at her, nodding their heads that she should go on. “We steered toward the mountain and found our own little paradise.”
Smiles broke out, and it was woven into local legend.
The second problem was that nobody dared to set foot on it at first. Anything that had appeared so suddenly might vanish just as quickly and nobody wanted to be on it when it did. At least nobody except those who wished for precisely that fate - you know, the kind who wait around for alien spaceships to scoop them from the face of the earth - but there were none of those in Fairfield at the time.
The question pointedly remained who would be brave enough to go up first. Perhaps that’s the man we should name the mountain after, suggested someone, a powerful incentive that stirred a few young men’s blood, but fear prevailed.
It was the children, of course, who beat all the others to the punch. Falling in love with her at first sight, it was all the parents could do to restrain them from dashing up her side the first moment they saw her, and it was only a few days before their enthusiasm prevailed over the adult’s general caution. With the growing conviction that the mountain had been there all along, and their children shaming them every day, they eventually sent out a scouting party. They were only gone an hour the first day, and wiped large beads of sweat off their heads upon their return, but the second day there were gone for three hours, and the third day from dawn until dark. Their reports were glowing: thick pine forest, a sweet cold stream, a huge variety of wild flowers in purples, blues, reds and yellows, and a host of wildlife, including squirrels, foxes and deer. After the third day the mountain was declared safe and the people began to venture onto her. The trickle, though gradual at first, quickly picked up as more positive reports came back. Soon trails were cut, cook stoves and picnic tables were set up in cleared groves and a gift shop was built right on the edge of town by the start of the main trail.
After all was said and done, the townspeople decided they liked the mountain, adopted it like a long lost orphan, and let their children go play upon it. They set out to cut trees and to find herbs and plants and minerals they had never had before except through expensive trade. The fact that it hadn’t always been there was gradually forgotten. People came to love their mountain. There were even plans in the works for a gondola to the upper slopes - perhaps even a ski area, though most people noticeably flinched at that idea - there was an unspoken sentiment that the mountain was their special mountain and not to be shared with the general public. Perhaps it got down to a fear that it would not turn out to be their mountain after all. Lost pets must always be returned to their rightful owners and perhaps it was the same with mountains.
But the mountain showed no signs of shying away from its new owners and, in fact provided them a wonderful playground they’d never had before. Aside from its sheer beauty, it stirred in people a sense of pride to look up at her from their porches and endowed those who walked her pine covered slopes with a sense of peace.
Despite their caution about making the mountain a tourist attraction, they still had a goodly share of tourists going through, and something had to be made up about the mountain’s history. Soon there were several agreed upon facts about the adventures that had occurred on the mountain over the years, and at the gift shop stories that had been made up only weeks before or re-circulated from ancient folklore were printed in gift books and embodied on coffee mugs.
Still, not everyone was convinced of the blessing this mountain brought to them. One crusty octogenarian tried to warn them that this kind of thing shouldn’t be happening in their neighborhood: “It’s wrong. It’s all wrong. I tell you it’s all wrong. It’s all wrong, I say.” But as people got used to having the mountain nearby, his voice lost all potency.
“Mountains don’t just grow up overnight,” he insisted. “That would be like a baby being born a man.”
All that netted him was a nickname for the mountain, which soon came to replace the official name: Born a’ Man. The Mayor could be often be heard saying, “Here, under the slopes of Mount Fairfield, or Mount Bornaman, as we like to call it...” while introducing some trivial topic. This later was smoothed like a river pebble down to Boramon, and, when some stranger asked who Boramon was, such a character was spontaneously pasted into town legend: Colonel Jacques Boramon was the man who drove the Indians from these parts, making sunny Fairfield habitable to settlers. Images of a slender, bearded man with black hair and a long buckskin coat started appearing in local literature. There was a likeness of him in a local tavern. Scurvy Jake, the bartender, who never hesitated to bend the ear of visitors
, was often heard saying, “Yes, Old Boramon died a horrible death, but he made the land safe for us ordinary folk. We are forever grateful to him. He is buried somewhere up on that mountain - nobody knows where. Went up there to take a last look around. When he saw there were no more Indians anywhere, he said `My work here is done,’ and vanished from human sight. Some say he descended and went West, where he was needed by other settlers; still others, that he died up there. Still others say that he’ll come back again if he’s ever needed - if the Indians return or if some other great menace ever comes to plague the good people of Fairfield. One man claims to have seen him up there, walking the mountain during thunderstorms, patrolling the area with a flint and powder rifle.” Hunger for such stories assured that the Old Colonel tavern would never lack for business.
But our own