More Tales of MU

…or, Coming Over A Mite Peckish

“Let’s talk about that kiss back there,” Iason said, when he’d finished picking the bread roll to pieces.

“What about it?” I asked.

“You called it a reward for trust,” he said, cupping one hand over the other to hold in the crumbs.

“Yeah, but don’t get any ideas,” I said.

“What sort of idea do you imagine I would get?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But I can easily imagine you finding some way of abusing my trust in turn.”

“What sort of trust would that be, if you did not even trust me to honor your trust?” he asked. He put his clasped hands up in front of his heart, and put on an affronted look.

“Well, why do you want to talk about the kiss, then?” I asked.

“Because I find it interesting.”

“What? It isn’t like we haven’t kissed before,” I said.

“I’ve kissed you in lust,” he said. “But you kissed me in trust. That, my reluctant young steed, is a gesture of affection.”

“Hey, trust is hot,” I said. “That’s why people play trust games in the bedroom.”

Iason laughed.

“Deny it howsoever you can,” he said. “You are falling for me, Iamie.”

“A little life and death struggle gets the blood pumping,” I said. “In a calmer moment, I might have given you a pat on the back.”

“You are falling for me,” he repeated, then stopped. Something fluttered overhead, and then an unseen bird cawed out a signal, three short sharp croaks. It was echoed from another bird further away, and then another, and another.

“Crows?” I asked.

“Shh,” Iason said. He raised his hands up over his head.

He cocked an ear up towards the canopy as the birds seemed to converse in squawks and screeches. When there was a break in the noise, Iason let out a pair of caws of his own and then threw his handfuls of bread high.

“Run, Iamie!” he yelled as there was an explosion of leaves and black feathers over our heads.

He threw his cape over both of our heads and we stumbled forward amid the sounds of caws and beating wings. The fury fell behind us. When it faded away, Iason whipped his cape off and stopped. I turned around to see a few black feathers fluttering to the ground. There were a few last wing beats, and a lot of branches were still swaying.

“What the hell was that about?” I asked.

“Parliamentary procedure,” he said.

“What?”

“I offered the crows payment for passing through their territory, and the parliament voted on whether or not to accept it.”

“A parliament is a collective of rooks,” I said. “With crows, it’s murder.”

“Only if they don’t like the payment,” he said. “Of course, even if they do, it’s not wise to get caught in their frenzy.”

“This is the sort of thing I mean when I say you should tell me about things in advance,” I said.

“You mean, you would have liked it better if I had said, ‘Now I’m going to tear this bread up into little tiny bits, and here is the crow sentry, and now I have to make an offering and when they take it we have to run?’”

“Yes,” I said.

“You wouldn’t find that terribly boring?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Give me a chance to find out. Could you understand what they were saying?”

“Only the broad strokes,” he said. “The outer guards report an intruder, and then there is a short discussion. The merits of eye-pecking are debated. I do not speak the language, but I know a few stock phrases, as it were.”

“Eye-pecking?” I repeated.

“I would have been happy keeping you in my room,” he said.

“You would have been happier keeping me in the stable.”

“Yes, but I was more than willing to compromise,” he said. “Come. I think we’re past the interesting parts for now.”

I noticed that even though he said this, he’d given the acrobatics a rest. He also picked up a sturdy branch and tapped it on the ground ahead of us as we walked.

“What are you doing with that?” I asked.

“I’m flattered that you’d spare my pride by pretending not to have noticed, but I didn’t exactly execute a perfect landing in the clearing,” he said.

“So that’s a walking stick,” I said.

“Yes.”

“You don’t seem to be putting much weight on it,” I said.

“Well, I’m only slightly injured.”

“Are we coming up on something dangerous underground?” I asked. “Like the crows?”

“Crows underground?” Iason said. “I wonder where you do get these ideas.”

“Iason.”

The stick jerked a bit in his hand, and there was a blur of red near the tip. I caught a glimpse of a fat, slug-like creature racing up the wooden limb.

“Eyugh!” Iason yelled.

He jerked the stick up away from the ground and tossed it underhand. It landed a few yards ahead of us. At the point of impact, a whole swarm of red worms a full inch in diameter boiled up from the ground and writhed over it, before disappearing back below the surface.

“Injury healed,” he said. He grabbed me by the shoulders and turned me ninety degrees to the right. “Let’s walk this way for a bit.”

“What the hell were those?” I asked.

He ignored the question, just kept marching me forward.

“I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what the hell those were,” I said, jerking out of his grasp.

“They were lightning worms,” he said. “Can we please keep moving?”

“Why?”

“Because while they move less quickly under the ground, they still move,” he said. He glanced back behind us, and I followed suit. There was a visible bulge in the ground heading towards us. It was wider across than from front to back, about ten feet by three or four. The dimensions changed as it was rippling around tree trunks, the smaller of which were left tilted at odd angles in its wake. It seemed to be gaining speed as it went, leaving the ground cracked and furrowed behind it.

“See this?” I said, gesturing at the disturbance. “This is why you should tell me when we’re about to run into something dangerous.”

“Why can’t you extend to me the same trust I have given you?” he asked.

“That’s different,” I said. “I didn’t have time to explain what I was doing.”

“And we don’t have time now,” he said, giving me a push. “Run!”

Our feet pounded the ground as we bolted from the approaching mound. Iason led me on a zig-zag course where the trees were thickest. The direction changes and tree roots slowed the subterranean swarm, but we were running uphill. The slope was slight at first, but it became more noticeable. It didn’t inconvenience the burrowing worms one bit. Despite Iason’s maneuvering, they were all but nipping at our feet.

Eventually we ran out of trees.

Then we ran out of ground.

“Jump, Iamie!” Iason yelled.

With the ground shifting beneath my heels, he didn’t have to tell me twice. I didn’t break stride. I planted one foot at the edge of the cliff and pushed off. We launched ourselves over a ravine. sailing out through space to come crashing down on the far side, a good ten feet below.

Well, I crashed. Iason landed in a sort of roll. How he managed it with a sword on his belt was beyond me.

“What were those?”

“I told you,” he said. “Lightning worms. Worms that move like lightning.”

“Tell me when we’re going to run into something like that!” I said.

“Very well,” he said. “I will.”

“Promise me.”

“I promise.”

“Swear!”

“I swear it!”

“Good,” I said. I sat up and started to dust myself off, then realized he’d agreed way too quickly. “Wait, what exactly do you swear?”

“That I shall tell you before we run into anything that is even a little bit like a lightning worm,” he said. “For the life of me, I can’t think of anything that is like a lightning worm except for another lightning worm, but if we come across one I will certainly let you know.”

I threw the pack at him. He caught it.

“Excellent thinking,” he said. “As we’ve made it, I think that a picnic is in order.”

“I want a cigarette,” I said, turning away from him to face the ravine.

“Those we do not have, I’m afraid,” he said.

I picked up a rock and threw it across. It hit the far wall, and was held there for a few seconds by a half dozen grubby red fingers that burst out of the dirt to grab it. The worms lost interest when they found the rock wasn’t edible, and then it tumbled to the bottom of the ravine.

“We came all this way, Iamie,” Iason said. “I can’t believe you do not even want to see it.”

“See what?” I asked, annoyed.

“The temple ruins,” he said. “Did you not hear what I said? We made it. We have arrived.”

I twisted around. Iason was about twelve yards back, half-turned and gesturing at something behind him. From my vantage point, I could only see trees. Then I realized that one of the trunks looked like stone.

I got to my feet and walked forward. The ground sloped up away from the chasm. The ruins were at the top of the rise. Iason had called it a temple, and I could see why he thought that. There were two rows of columns, badly worn and broken, and many of them toppled over or consisting only of a stubby base. In between these, there was the crumbling foundation of walls. At one end of the former building, there was a huge slab of marble. It was a shapeless, roughly rectangular blob now, but it would have once been the focal point of a good sized room. An altar? An idol?

I walked up and put my hand on it, feeling the worn stone.

“And you don’t think these are Athanasian?” I asked, looking at the columns. There wasn’t much to go on, but “ancient” plus “columns” was pretty typical of the elves of the golden age.

“But no,” he said. “Architecture from that period is either better preserved, as it has been maintained throughout history, or it is gone. These ruins are not that ancient, but they were already here and already old when the current elves moved into the forest.”

“The sidhe have been here forever, though, haven’t they?”

“They do not take credit for its construction, and truthfully, it is a bit big for them,” Iason said. “Additionally, I have never known the sidhe to build temples.”

“Who, then?”

“My belief is human men.”

“Humans have only been on this continent for five centuries,” I said.

“What you really mean is there were no humans here when you landed five centuries ago.”

“What, you think there was a nation of humans here who built this and then left, or died out?” I asked.

“It’s possible,” he said.

“But why humans and not some other race?” I said.

He shrugged.

“It’s simply my theory,” he said.

“Have you ever asked any of the sidhe?”

“Have you tried asking sidhe anything?” he asked.

“No.”

“If we do by chance encounter one, make a polite inquiry on the subject,” Iason said. “Or any other.”

“I will,” I said, sitting down on the broken wall. “Maybe my politeness will get me a little further than yours.”

“Maybe it will,” Iason said. He put the pack down and began clearing weeds and vines from an area. The floor of the former temple was broken to the point that it was hard to say if it was more floor or ground. “Go and fetch us some wood.”

I got up and unhooked my axe, then started to head for the trees. I stopped before I stepped down from the ruins.

“Uh, any caveats or warnings you want to give me?” I asked.

“None,” he said.

“I’m not going to stumble into a nest of flying snakes?” I asked. “Or a killer rabbit with big sharp teeth?”

“No, you’ll be perfectly safe anywhere on the hilltop, I promise,” he said. “No animal will come near this spot, for any reason.”

“Well, khee, that isn’t at all ominous, is it?” I said.

“No, it’s what makes it such an attractive spot for picnicking,” Iason said. “But, please do get on with it. It’s somewhat less attractive after dark.”

“Why?”

“You are burning the non-proverbial daylight, Iamie,” Iason said, giving me a push on the rear.

I sighed and gritted my teeth. It didn’t take long to get a good collection of good, dry wood. For some strange reason, a lot of the trees closest to the temple were dead wood ready to be chopped.

“Nice picnic spot,” I said, dropping my load of wood near the space Iason had cleared. He’d been gathering loose stones to make a fire bank.

“Thank you,” he said. He got the fire started easily in his circle of stones, using the vines and weeds as tinder, and then pulled some foil wrapped bundles out of the pack. “All things considered, I think it is a good thing I didn’t bring the eggs.”

“Funny,” I said.

I watched him tending the fire for a bit. He stared at it like it was his will that ordered the dancing of the flames. The wood burned quickly. He added more logs, and poked the embers of the original fuel.

“Tell me more about the lightning worms,” I said.

“What you have seen is what I know,” he said, still staring at the fire.

“What are they, though?”

“Hungry,” he said. “Very hungry.”

“They don’t spit lightning or anything, do they?”

“No,” he said. “They just move very quickly.”

“What happens if you get caught in the swarm?”

“It is the strangest thing, but I have never been curious enough to find out,” he said.

“So you really don’t know any more about them than that,” I said.

“No, I really do not,” he said. “I doubt very much that anybody does. Few people make a habit of coming out this way.”

“Tell me about the green men, then,” I said. I’d seen so many new things, and my curiosity was piqued about all of them. Iason’s insistence on playing everything close to the vest was only whetting my hunger. “They’re closer to Treehome. People have to know about them.”

“They do, just as you do now.”

“But what are they?” I asked.

“You have seen them, Iamie.”

“But what are they? Where do they come from?” I asked. “Are they a natural plant, or some kind of bushy golem?”

“It’s possible some mad wizard was originally responsible for their genesis, but they seem to grow well enough on their own.”

“Why are they called green men?” I asked.

“Because to call them purple men would be the very height of dishonesty,” he said.

“Why men, though?” I said. ”

“‘Men’ as in humans,” Iason said. “Because they are slow, clumsy, and dull.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Though there are stories,” Iason said.

“Tell me them,” I said. “I’m missing my lore class.”

“Some believe that their sap does not just paralyze and irritate, it slowly transforms the victim into another plant,” he said. “So that a green man you encounter may have indeed once been a man of one sort or another.”

“But there’s no truth to that?” I asked, shuddering.

“No, it’s just a story,” he said. “They hold their prey until it dies, and then absorb the decomposing flesh. Their victims only become green men in the way that a rabbit or a chicken may become part of a man. And on that subject,” he said, and he started putting the foil pouches in among the stones, throwing some of them into the embers and placing some farther away. “Those will take a while,” he said, looking up from his work for the first time since lighting the fire. “That leaves us with some time to, as they say, kill.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“You want to have sex in a ruined temple of an unknown god?” I asked.

“Of course,” he said. “What else do you think was the point of today?”

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