CHAPTER 4
“What’s he look like?” Mick asked Scott. “I can’t see.”
Scott squinted down the cobblestone road from the safety of the bushes. A traveler approached. “Like, middle-aged, I guess,” Scott whispered. “Riding a donkey. I’m pretty sure he’s human, and maybe blind?”
“Why blind?”
“’Cause he has a blindfold on.”
“If he were blind, why would he need a blindfold?”
“If he weren’t blind, why would he want a blindfold? I don’t know, maybe he has really gross eyes?”
“Well, I say we stop ’im,” said Mick. “Maybe he’ll wanna trade some food for all this gold I keep findin’.”
Scott stepped out into the road, and the donkey immediately brayed. The blindfolded man fumbled with a crossbow that was slung over his shoulders. “Um, sorry,” Scott said. “Hi. I didn’t mean to scare you, I just wondered if you had any food I could buy.”
“You sound like just a boy,” the man said, and he reached for his blindfold. Then he seemed to think better of this, and left it where it was. “Or a young lady.”
“Boy.”
“Are you alone, boy?”
“More or less.”
“For heaven’s sake, lad, run home to your mother! The ronopolisk is loose!”
Scott frowned. He didn’t know what that was. He considered himself kind of an expert on fantasy monsters and still resented it whenever anyone tried to tell him something he hadn’t already heard of. He turned to where Mick watched through the bushes and mouthed “Ronopolisk?” but the leprechaun just shrugged.
“Well . . . thanks. I’ll keep an eye out. So do you want to sell any food?”
“Keep an eye out? Keep an eye out? He wants to keep an eye out!” the man complained, possibly to the donkey. “For the ronopolisk, whose mere glance can turn a man to stoat!”
Oh, like a basilisk, Scott thought. He knew about basilisks. “Don’t you mean ‘turn a man to stone’?” he asked.
“I said stoat, an’ I meant stoat.”
Scott glanced at Mick again. “It’s a kind o’ weasel,” Mick whispered.
“I hear tell that the queen of the fairies herself awoke the dreaded ronopolisk,” the man continued, “and promised it a great favor if it would only use its hundred noses to hunt down some subject who’s displeased her.”
Scott sighed. “Well. You’d better get out of here then, ’cause that subject is me. Me and my friend here.”
“What?” The man tensed and reined back the donkey’s head. Now he lifted a corner of his blindfold and peeked. “But how’s that possible? You’re just a boy!”
“A growin’ boy,” Mick agreed as he stepped out of the bushes. “So abou’ that food—”
The man tossed them one of the donkey’s saddlebags before kicking the beast’s haunches. Bits of bread and hard cheese spilled out into the road. The donkey lurched into a trot, its ears flicking nervously.
“Protect your eyes, boy, and Fortune preserve you!” the man called as he crested the hill. “May luck be more a lady than that witch Titania!”
Mick and Scott stood on the path and watched the man and his donkey disappear.
“You should be good luck, shouldn’t you?” Scott asked Mick. “’Cause it kinda seems like you aren’t.”
“I swear that’s the third traveler I’ve seen wearing a blindfold,” said John to Merle and the Queen of England. “What’s going on?”
“Blindfold or no, it would seem they’re all in a great rush to return home,” said the queen. “I’m positively bubbling with envy.”
Merle sighed. “We’re doing the best we can, Your Majesty,” he said. “John’s son’s stuck in Pretannica somewhere too. We thought he and Mick might come back here—”
“To the spot where your so-called rift used to be,” finished the queen. “You’ve said. A more opinionated person than I might wonder why Sir John allowed a child to come to this world in the first place.”
John clucked his tongue. “Like I need parenting advice from the British monarchy,” he muttered.
Just then Finchbriton returned from scouting the path ahead and chirped a bouncy trio of notes that they’d come to understand meant “all clear.” They rose and stretched their legs. The queen, who for complicated reasons was only two feet tall, stepped into John’s backpack.
“That’s it, then,” Merle said as he went through the back-cracking, knee-popping process of getting to his feet. “We head northeast. To Dundalk, maybe, if there is a Dundalk here. And we hire a boat to take us out to the Isle of Man—try to find that pixie castle Prince Fi told us about, so we can get a rift home.”
“The castle with the witch and giant henchmen?” said the queen. “I ask merely for clarification.”
“To be fair,” said John, “they’re not really giant. Just human sized.”
“I currently fail to see the difference.”
“So how d’ yeh propose we find our way north if we can’t see?” Mick asked the travelers in the buggy. “We haven’t any horses or donkeys who know the way, like you lot.”
“If yeh knew anythin’ about the ronopolisk, yeh wouldn’t ask such questions,” said the young mother, and she hugged her blindfolded children closer. “Yeh’d just tie somethin’ round your eyes and pray to Fortuna.”
“Oh, we know all ’bout the ronopolisk,” Mick said, glancing at Scott. “Ev’ry man an’ his aunt Chatty has been tellin’ us ’bout the ronopolisk.”
Scott ticked each item off on his fingers. “It has a hundred heads, or maybe a thousand. And each head has a nose and a single eye, and each eye has a different superpower; though to hear everyone tell it, half of them seem to turn you into some kind of weasel. It has two fat legs and a big mouth in its chest, and it’s called the ronopolisk because it’s like a basilisk and ‘rho’ means one hundred in Greek or something.”
The woman shook her head at them. Or near them, anyway—she was blindfolded.
“I heard it’s called the ronopolisk ’cause its great horn is as sharp as Ron, the legendary spear o’ King Arthur.”
Mick turned to Scott. “That’s the first we’ve heard anythin’ about a horn,” he said.
“King Arthur had a spear named Ron?”
“It was probably a gift,” said Mick. “Are yeh stuck for somethin’ to give a visitin’ king? Worried it’s gonna look like yeh just crammed the first steak knife yeh could find inna nice box? So call it the Great Dagger Carnwennan the Witch Killer or whatever. I’ll bet even his chamberpot had a name.”
“Yeah, but Ron?”
They’d been walking a half hour before Merle couldn’t keep quiet about it any longer.
“Is it just me,” he asked, “or are we seeing an awful lot of weasels all the sudden?”
CHAPTER 5
The ground trembled. The epicenter seemed to move, tracing a slow ring around the spot where they stood.
“Huh,” said John. “Earthquake?”
“What did that weasel just say?” asked Merle.
“That wasn’t a weasel, that was me. I said, ‘Huh. Earthquake?’”
“No, shh,” Merle said with a flick of his hand. Then he addressed a weasel that had paused by a thicket. “What did you say?”
“I said, ‘Hurry!’” the weasel answered. “It’s about to surface again!”
“What is?”
“Ronopolisk!” cried the weasel. Then it was gone.
“Oh, jeez,” said Merle, and he threw off his backpack and started fumbling through the pockets. “Close your eyes! Or cover them with something! Your Majesty, maybe you oughtta just zip yourself in.”
John shut his eyes tight. “What is it? What’s a ronopolisk?”
The tremors reconvened their slow circling path.
“No idea. But it ends in -lisk, and all those people with blindfolds . . . I know at least four different monsters that can kill a man just by lookin’ at him funny. What if this is number—”
The
earth softened beneath his feet, and in an instant Merle was buried up to his ankles.
“Aah! Help me!”
John grabbed the old man’s wrists and pulled him free, and they backed away from a widening sinkhole. Through the sand and grit, three snakelike tendrils unfurled . . . three tendrils topped with piggy noses and bulbous eyes.
“Ooh, don’t look at th—” said Merle, before turning into a weasel.
The weasel emerged from the droopy folds of Merle’s otherwise empty clothing. “I looked right at them,” he said. “Why did I do that?”
John looked only at his own feet until he found the weasel and scooped up his furry noodle of a body. He placed Merle atop his shoulder and backed away from where he imagined the ronopolisk might be. “Finchbriton!” he called.
The finch twittered back.
“Your Majesty! Are you all right back there?”
“Never better. Worry more about yourself, good sir knight.”
Good sir knight. That was a nice gesture, John thought.
The ronopolisk was now fully aboveground, and had anyone bothered to look at it they would have seen a body like a six-foot wart, with stamping elephant legs and a gaping snaggletoothed mouth where a waist ought to be. Above the mouth was a horn like a lance, and above the horn were a hundred eyestalks, each with a nose and a big weepy eye.
“WHUH,” said the ronopolisk. “BLAR.”
John had his sword and the chickadee shield at the ready, and he swiped the former around in crazy eights in front of him.
“Leave us alone! Shoo! Go bother someone else!” John shouted. “YAH!” he added, because the weasel on his shoulder was suddenly not a weasel anymore. The fresh weight almost knocked him backward.
“I looked again,” said Merle, or a giant dung fly with Merle’s voice. He buzzed down to the ground and botched the landing. “Think it got me with two eyes at once that time.”
The beast seemed to be keeping its distance, and sniffing. John heard a hundred stuffy little noses.
“WHUH WHUH CHOHN?” said the ronopolisk.
“I . . . think it just said my name,” said John.
“Perhaps it likes your records,” said the queen.
“WHUH MERWIN?” the monster added. “WHUH WHUH QUEEN?” Then it charged John. John swung his sword, whiffed, and took the point of the creature’s horn in the center of his shield. He was bowled over, caught his heel on an exposed root, and twisted to take the fall on his side and protect his queen. Then a jagged mouth closed over the toe of his boot.
So at least he knew where the monster was. He slashed again and connected this time, and the beast retreated and stomped its feet.
“Merle! You still okay?”
“I was a fly! Then I was three flies. Then three weasels. Then I was trapped in ice for a bit, but that melted and now I think I’m a woman.”
“You looked again? Stop looking!”
“I was a fly! I didn’t have eyelids!”
John crouched behind his shield—it sounded like the ronopolisk might be charging again—but then he felt flames all around, followed by Finchbriton’s whistle.
“WHUH!” said the ronopolisk from some distance away. There was a smell of burned hot dogs. John’s sleeve was on fire, and he dropped to his knees to beat it against the ground.
“I looked again!” said Merle. “Accidentally. But I think it changed me back to normal. Am I back to normal?”
The queen peeked out a gap between the zippers. “Apart from the feathers.”
“My shield,” said John as he groped about. “Where’s my shield? I dropped it like an idiot when my sleeve was on fire.”
“WHUH WHUH WHUH,” said the ronopolisk. It sounded like a chuckle.
John peered through slitted eyes at his feet, then behind him. There was a sturdy tree not far off, and a stupid idea occurred to him, the sort of thing that would only work in the movies. Perfect.
He backed up, forgetting his shield for a moment.
“I was a cloud for a bit,” said Merle, “but I’m better now—”
“Shh!” John scolded. He had to listen, he needed quiet.
The ronopolisk snorted, and John listened. It paced back and forth on its fat legs, and John tracked its movement, barely. Then it scuffed the ground and charged, and John trembled as he waited one second, two—
Then he leaped to one side, through a slithering mess of eyestalks, and both felt and heard the horn impale the tree.
“WHUH! RUH!” the monster grunted, heaving backward. The tree creaked and groaned.
John’s side ached, his ankle was twisted, he was lying in a bed of hissing mushrooms. But he came up swinging and moved steadily toward the sounds of struggle until the piñata was in reach. He hacked and slashed, and the monster bellowed. He could have used Merle’s help, but Merle was busy being a pile of sausages.
Then the ronopolisk wrenched free, pivoted around, and John was thwacked in the head by the shaft of its horn. Everything went black.
“Sir John!” shouted the queen from his backpack. “Are you awake? Are you alive?”
How much time had passed? John came to and couldn’t resist the instinct to open his eyelids. Before he shut them he saw, not a single eye, but rather the cavernous mouth of the ronopolisk looming right above his head.
His sword was still in his hand, but he couldn’t move his arm.
The beast had a leg on either side of John’s waist, its wrinkly bulk just dripping with stink.
“How do you know our . . . our names?” John panted.
“HUNT YOU.”
“Why? Why are you hunting us?”
“MATE! MATE!”
“Oh dear God,” said the queen.
“You . . . want to mate with us?”
“QUEEN HAVE MATE!”
“I most certainly do not.”
“FAIRY QUEEN! WHUH! FAIRY QUEEN HAVE MATE!”
John let out a breath. “Oh. I . . . I’m sorry,” he said. “The fairies are holding your mate. Yes? So you’re going to kill us for the fairies.”
“MATE!”
John sighed and coughed. “This hero thing . . . I don’t like it as much as I thought I might. Finchbriton!”
The little bird whistled from somewhere high.
“Follow my voice! The monster’s right on top of me, but the queen is safe! Burn it!”
Finchbriton warbled something, uncertainly.
“Do it! Do it now!”
The ronopolisk seemed to understand and began to back away. But Finchbriton’s aim was off too, and he managed by happenstance to torch the monster square in the chest.
John felt singed but not actually aflame, so he reached over with his left hand to grab the sword out of his right, and stabbed. The ronopolisk wailed and slumped to the ground.
“Hey!” said Merle. “Hey, I’m pretty sure I’m normal again! I think I lost a bunch of time, there. What was I? The ronopolisk looks dead.”
“So . . . ,” said John. “It’s safe to open my eyes?”
“Depends on your point of view. I am naked.”
“I’m going to give you a moment. Your Majesty? Sorry I fell on you.”
“I seem to have survived it. That was . . . you were very brave—to win the day you were willing to be badly burned. We were right to knight you.”
John blushed and helped the battered queen out of his backpack. “I thought I was ‘too young,’” he told her. “I thought I was just a ‘silly pop star.’”
The queen raised an eyebrow. “I only ever said you were too young,” she said. “Don’t credit me with the whisperings of your own conscience, John.”
“Sorry.” John smiled. “And thanks.”
Finchbriton lit on his shoulder, and when Merle joined them, they all looked down at the dead lumpen figure of the ronopolisk. Its big steak of a tongue lolled out of its mouth; its eyestalks were a tangle of limp pasta. A lot of the eyes were still open, but that didn’t seem to matter now.
“Poor dumb thing,??
? John said to himself.
Before long a woman crept toward them through the trees.
“Yeh killed it,” she said. She seemed to be trying to hide herself behind some underbrush. “Yeh slew the ronopolisk!”
“Yes,” John agreed.
“He slew the ronopolisk!” said the woman to a man who’d just arrived. They were both naked but seemed otherwise happy.
More arrived, all naked, all victims who’d looked the ronopolisk in the eye and spent the past hour as this or that.
“I’ve heard o’ him!” said a man as he pointed at John. “He’s the one they call the Chickadee!”
“Why, that’s right!” said Merle, grinning.
John winced. “We should probably keep moving,” he said.
“Right,” said the naked man. “Where are we going?”
CHAPTER 6
Scott and Mick continued to make their way northeast—or what Mick claimed to be northeast, at any rate. The leprechaun seemed to have an innate sense of direction here, despite the lack of sun or stars or moon or compasses.
“I’m getting about ready to rest for the . . . night,” said Scott. “Or whatever you want to call it.”
Mick gave him a look. “Already? ’S only been nine hours since we woke.”
“You keep saying stuff like that. ‘Yeh ate fifty minutes ago.’ ‘That was eight hours sleep.’ ‘We haven’t been stuck in Pretannica for five hundred years.’”
Mick grunted. “Yeh’re starting to sound like your sister.”
“You take that back.”
“An’ was that supposed to have been an impersonation o’ me? Yeh sounded Punjabi.”
They continued in silence for a minute.
“I’m in a bad mood,” said Scott.
“Get out o’ town.”
“And my feet hurt, because of blisters.”
“Sure an’ they would.”
“Plus the glamour here’s been giving me headaches.”
“’S like the labors of Hercules, yeh have so much on your plate.”
“Exactly. That’s all I wanted you to say.”
Mick glanced around in every direction. “How ’bout we rest for ten minutes, an’ I reach out with my glamour to see if any o’ Titania’s people are gettin’ close?”