****
“WELCOME TO OUR LAND OF THE FAIRY, JOHNNY GOTH AND LADY ELIZABETH,” thundered the Giant with a voice so deep and loud that the Earth seemed to tremble. “I AM GOR.” That Gor was male was embarrassingly obvious, despite the dim light and the profusion of hair that covered him, for other than hair he was totally naked.
“Holy shits,” muttered Elizabeth.
The unicorn did its odd snorting whinny again, which Elizabeth by now was sure was laughter.
“YOU GREW UP, WOLF CUB,” said the giant, smiling.
“And you gained weight,” replied Johnny.
The forest echoed from Gor’s laughter.
“Gor is our best healer, Elizabeth,” said Pru. “Sit in his hand and he will help you. The Evil One has hurt you more than you know.”
Gor sat down and rested his back against the One Tree, reached out to place his immense right hand in front of Elizabeth, and turned it palm up.
“Go ahead,” said Johnny, as he helped Elizabeth climb up onto the huge hand. “Make yourself comfortable.”
Elizabeth lay back as Gor held her next to his massive, hairy chest. The hand felt like a pleasantly warm and well-padded leather recliner, and was similar in size. In spite of everything, she found that she could indeed relax.
“I WON’T HURT YOU, LITTLE LADY,” said Gor. “REST. I WILL DO THE WORK.” He took a great deep breath and closed his eyes. His hairy brow wrinkled in concentration. “OH!” he exclaimed. “EVIL HAS STRUCK WITHIN YOU; BUT GORE WILL REMOVE IT.”
Johnny and Pru stood silently watching. The forest around them had grown silent also, night birds and insect sounds had faded until only the slow deep breathing of Gor could be heard. His immense chest rose and fell, gradually faster. Suddenly he took one final, titanic deep breath and held it in puffed hairy cheeks. The muscles in his gigantic body and face tensed and rippled, and huge wet tears ran down from his eyes and into his great black shaggy beard.
Elizabeth tingled all over, all pain rapidly disappearing.
After only a few long silent, frozen moments, the giant relaxed, exhaled a great sigh, and opened his eyes. A big smile formed on his face. “GOR IS DONE,” he announced.
Indeed, Elizabeth’s arm and shoulder felt perfectly normal. More, she felt herself again. Johnny leapt/flew to join Elizabeth in Gor’s hand, hugging her tightly for the first time since the rescue from Dark.
“Gor will take you to a cabin where you can both sleep,” said Pru. “In the morning we will talk of your father, Johnny.”
“What about the threats to Goth Mountain?” Johnny pathed.
“Do not worry yourself,” replied Pru. “Baldor, Two Bears, and the Tribe are there.”
Gor heaved his great bulk up and began slowly walking, after perching Johnny and Elizabeth on one of his broad shoulders. From their perch the two humans measured their progress across the clearing to be as fast as humans might jog.
“Did giants help build the Goth cabin?” Elizabeth asked, unable to contain her curiosity.
“OF COURSE,” boomed Gor. “LITTLE HUMAN HOUSES ARE EASY. THIS ONE I’M TAKING YOU TO ONLY TOOK ONE DAY TO BUILD.”
“A human house? For a human?” asked Johnny in surprise.
“WE DON’T OFTEN LET OUTSIDERS STAY HERE IN THIS LAND, BUT GUS IS A SPECIAL CASE.”
“I don’t remember anyone named Gus.”
“FEN MET HIM AND HE ENDED UP HERE ONLY A COUPLE OF YEARS AGO. GUS WILL TELL YOU HIS STORY, I’M SURE.”
“So Gus didn’t know my father?”
“NO. BUT IN HIS CABIN HE IS KEEPING SOMETHING OF YOUR FATHER’S FOR YOU. A HUMAN THING. AND THE BODY OF MARK GOTH IS NEARBY AS WELL.”
They were rapidly approaching lights at one edge of the clearing which the humans soon recognized to be windows of a small log cabin. When they reached it a door flung open and out stepped a thin, hairy little old man, wearing worn jeans and shirt but no shoes. His hair was a spectacular red tinged with gray.
“THIS IS THEM, GUS,” announced Gor, lowering Johnny and Elizabeth to the ground in front of the old man. “JOHNNY AND ELIZABETH, MEET AUGUSTUS MCGREGOR.”
“Happy to meet you,” said the man, as he shook their hands vigorously, “if it’s really you that I’m meeting.”
“Why wouldn’t it be?” asked Elizabeth.
“That pesky goat-man Fen has been introducing me to me all night. Are you sure you’re who you think you are?”
Johnny smiled. “We are, as well you would know, you old faker!” he said. “Fess up!”
“Ye better fess up, ye varmint!” said a second, identical Augustus McGregor, as he stepped out of the cabin and confronted the first McGregor angrily. I’ve had enough of your cockamamie flimflam, you goat breath-filled old faker!”
“FESS UP,” demanded the giant, glaring at the first little man.
"Alright, if you insist, I'm Fen," said the first Gus, grinning. Suddenly his form was indistinct and wavering, like a reflection on a rippling pond, before it re-solidified into a pointy eared, oldish looking little goat man with little goat horns on his forehead and shaggy goat legs and backside, as well as hooves instead of feet. He looked exactly like Ned, but for graying hair. “Hi Johnny,” he said, as he leapt into Johnny’s arms for a big hug.
“I’m Augustus McGregor, at your service, but call me Gus,” said the remaining McGregor, as he shook the hands of both Johnny and Elizabeth. “I take it you know this hairy little troublemaker,” he said, nodding towards Fen, who was being put back on the ground by Johnny.
“I do,” replied Johnny. “We have some catching up to do, and I’d like to hear your story too; I’ve never heard of a human living in the Land.”
“You’ll have both my story and Fen’s, but let’s do it inside where I can fix us some tea. Then you’ll be wanting to rest.”
“I’LL BE HEADING HOME THEN, LITTLE FOLK,” said Gor. “I’LL BE BACK IN THE MORNING WITH PRU AND A FEW OF THE FAIR FOLK THAT WOULD LIKE TO MEET YOU BOTH. SLEEP THEE WELL, HUMANS.”
Gus led them into the cabin. With a wave of his hands the cabin was illuminated by a dull glow. “Unicorn gift, that,” the old man commented. “No electricity here, you know.”
The cabin reminded Johnny very much of Dooley’s place. Walls were lined with tables and shelves cluttered under dried leaves, flowers, and mushrooms, odd colored rocks, animal bones, and old wasps-nests, feathers, notebooks, and other naturalist paraphernalia. It looked a lot like Dooley’s home, though even Dooley had more furniture. On the floor were four mounds of straw covered with blankets. A small fireplace with a glowing fire helped create an atmosphere of warmth and comfort.
“It ain’t the Ritz but it’s better than sleeping on the ground,” said Gus. “Make yourselves comfortable and I’ll brew us some tea.”
“No problems here with bugs or cold, I assume,” said Johnny.
“You assume right, lad, thanks to unicorn magic,” said Fen. “That there fire is eternal, and bugs aren’t harmful here, and they don’t set foot in this cabin anyway. But there’s no TV or Internet either, and I haven’t been to the outside world in three years. So I have some catching up on things to do tomorrow with you, if there’s time.
“What are these things?” Elizabeth asked, pointing to what she had first thought were three thin books or pamphlets laying on one of the tables. With closer inspection she had noticed that they seemed to be made of solid metal.
“That’s a good question, lass,” Gus remarked, as he picked up one of the metallic tablets and handed it to her, along with a cup of tea.
She expected the metallic appearing item to be heavy, but it was light as a feather, even though it was a quarter-inch thick and eight-inches square, and seemed to be as solid as molded steel. Viewed directly it appeared to be covered with tiny, strange, unintelligible three-dimensional runes which disappeared when viewed at an angle. More strangely yet, the surface of the tablet felt cool and perfectly smooth to the touch.
“It’s some sort of ali
en artifact, I figure,” said Gus, “with writing put on its surface somehow.”
“Can Pru or the others read it?” Johnny asked.
“Not a word of it,” Fen admitted. “Some of us suspect that our ancestors made them, and then over the years forgot how to read them. We don’t seem to have our own written language; Gus thinks the writing looks vaguely familiar to old Earth writing. They were found by Ned not far from the Cube only last week, buried just under the surface of the ground. They could have been there for thousands of years, though Pru is puzzled why they weren't found sooner if they were there that long. The corner of one of them was poking up out of the ground and looked like an odd stone to Ned. Everyone is supposed to stay away from the Cube though; Pru wasn't happy that Ned ventured so close to it.”
“It's Babylonian or something, maybe,” said Gus. “I’ve been trying to decipher them but I’m no expert in ancient languages. Too bad some of my old academic friends aren’t here with me. Even if it's a brand new language I bet they'd come up with something. If I was on the outside I'd make some inquiries. No mail or email service here, though. The Land is too isolated for its own good, I think.”
“Most of us don’t have much contact with the outside world, and visa-versa,” admitted Fen. “Say, how is my nephew Ned? We heard there’s been more trouble in your world.”
“Ned had a run in with an evil demon named Dark, but he’s alright now,” related Johnny. “My mom and White Dove patched him up.”
The goat man’s smile disappeared. “Dark? An evil wolf-man that lives off suffering and death?”
“Sounds like him.”
“That’s very bad news Johnny. Dark is as bad as they come. Our legends say that he’s the mortal enemy of the People. On the other hand, you and your Mom returning is good news. Maybe things have a way of balancing out. But take care, Dark is a ruthless killer.”
“We’ll be careful, but we have your folk on our side, including Pru and Baldor.”
Fen’s expression remained grave. “Dark has killed our folk too, Johnny, including even unicorns.”
“Even unicorns!” said Johnny, in shock. “But why would the People put up with that sort of thing?”
“You mean why wouldn’t we have hunted down and killed Dark years ago? Don’t you know the answer to that already?”
Johnny thought for a moment, and nodded his head. “Of course I do. It was a dumb question.”
“You’ve been away a long time.”
“I don’t know,” said Elizabeth.
“The ‘thou shall not kill’ rule is one of their strongest,” explained Gus. “They’re pretty much pacifists, all of them, though if pushed into a corner they’ll defend themselves and their friends.”
“You’ve learned a lot about the People,” said Johnny. “I’m still curious about exactly how you came to live here.”
As he continued to share herbal tea with his guests, McGregor told them that he had retired and moved to Florida four years earlier. He had gotten bored almost immediately, despite interesting experiences with abundant nifty reptiles and insects. Three years ago when he was in Mt. Rainier Park in Washington, while trying to track down a family of Sasquatch, he ran into Fen, who was in Mt. Rainier Park trying to track down a family of Sasquatch.
Fen was disguised as a forest ranger at the time. The two hit it off immediately, and Fen eventually sort of adopted Gus and took him home with him as the first human to live in the Land in several centuries. Wanderlust being a key element of Sasquatch psychology, the Big Foot family came home to the Land for a only few weeks before feeling the need to traipse off again. “Later I found out that a couple of hundred of the People are spread all over the world in the Sasquatch form. They are the Sasquatch. Most visit here from time to time,” Gus explained.
“But how did you get The People to agree to let you come here?” asked Johnny. “More to the point, how did you get a unicorn to bring you in here?”
Fen and Gus looked at each other glumly, but said nothing.
“You fooled them?” guessed Elizabeth.
“It was a miscalculation on my part,” confessed Fen, shrugging. “I should have known better.”
“But how?” asked Johnny.
“We can’t tell,” said Fen. “That’s one of the things we promised.”
“What else?”
“I get to stay here for the rest of my life,” said Gus. “Pretty good deal, actually, more a reward than a punishment.”
“And I have to stay with him, that’s my punishment,” added Fen. “I’m grounded, as you humans would say. I can’t leave the Land as long as Gus remains here, unless they change their minds. But it’s not such a big deal for me; humans are short lived.”
“Especially if we don’t get enough sleep,” said Gus, grumpily.
“You’re right,” agreed Johnny. “It’s been a very long day.”
“I’m really very tired all of a sudden, Johnny,” said Elizabeth, yawning.
“We all are,” said Fen, “thanks to Gus’s sleepy-time tea. Special blend; we have it every night.”
They turned their attention to Gus. The old man had put away the washed teacups and was standing next to his makeshift bed, yawning deeply. With a sigh he collapsed onto the soft blanket covered hay mattress. He was snoring immediately. At the same time, the oil lamp went out, the fireplace fire dimmed, and gravity seemed to increase, especially for eyelids.
“Isn’t that funny,” Johnny mumbled. “Real sleepy time tea.” But the others were already asleep. “Goo-night,” Johnny managed, as he plopped down next to Elizabeth, meaning to at least kiss her on the cheek but blanking out before he could do so.
Johnny and Elizabeth slept peacefully, but had strange dreams in which unicorns, giants, goat men, and other strange beings spoke with them about many things and with each other, usually telepathically.
“I like them, for humans,” said one voice.
“Irrelevant,” said another. “We should withdraw from humans entirely. The humans are becoming too dangerous and arrogant.”
“Which is exactly why we should remain in contact with them.”
“And risk further contamination? Look at what they’ve done to Fen and Ned already! I say leave them to their own devices and they’ll wipe themselves out soon. Within a few thousand years at most, if an asteroid or super volcano doesn’t do the job first.”
“What’s a super volcano?” Johnny asked in his dream.
“The human listens!”
“In his sleep?”
“All the more remarkable. He has strong powers.”
“He is too much like his father. He is dangerous.”
“That’s what I like about him.”
“I withhold my judgment until the morrow.”
“So should we all.”