The Kingdom of the Damned

by Mario Garrido Espinosa

  "It seems you do not know about these things, indeed," Celedonio Butcher said, who was seeing the bone for the first time that day. “Even my son knows that ogres eat only human flesh, and when they are really hungry and there is no choice but to swallow the flesh of other animals. Pretty disgusting, by the way. But always meat, not bone.”

  "An ogre has been seen to kill a dragon," said a man with a single eyebrow, "because they never get close to each other, unless, of course, the dragon is sick or mortally wounded."

  “And why cannot it be from a very big deer?” the one who was considered one of the dumbest of the whole Alpurria and surroundings asked.

  “Look you can get to say nonsense, Gervasio...”

  "Of course, a deer cannot be," the man, with a single eyebrow, corrected. “Now, it's not so stupid to think it's from a giant gnome’s belly. You know that in the forest there are many...”

  “Enough! This is enough of talking," Candid said. “I say that there may be a cemetery of dragons and the only way to know is to go to the place and not stop digging until we find a bone of a dragon’s head.”

  These words were the end of the incredible conversation. All of them went home and soon returned armed with the tool they thought necessary; and as if they were a group of children who go exploring, they went into the forest.

  Candid Cabrera, who guided the villagers, took them to the place in such a direct way that it seemed that he had been passing through all his life. They scrambled to dig like crazy, without respecting neither trees nor rocks and without following any order, and when the day ended they gave up without finding anything, returning to La Alpurria terribly disappointed and tired. The hole that they all left was so big that with time and raining base was filled with water, and in times without drought, it served for wild animals to drink in the formidable pool created by those men.

  Candid Cabrera tried to place his bone for all means, as if it were a strange and curious ornament, in the cabin that the family used to eat, but his wife, Nemesia, with a more hygienic and lucid approach, refused in a round, threatening even to leave and never return to the house, which is one of the oldest threats —and also most effective— wielded by a wife. Candid Cabrera had no choice but to give up —as almost always with his partner— and banish the bone to the haystack, where it intermingled miserably with the tools, mice, straw and dirt.

  5

  Following the trail now was easier than in the previous day, since the animal must have been very badly injured. There was a clear trail of blood and branches broken by the clumsy rubbing and lurches given by the boar, which had to walk in an insecure way. They did not walk long when they found Celedonio's knife abandoned, with dried blood and bits of animal flesh on the blade. The owner picked up his gun and tried to clean it with earth from the ground.

  The three neighbors moved through the forest for another hour. Suddenly they found something spooky that almost made their eyes pop out of their sockets. There, right next to a thorny wild asparagus farm, lay a child’s small leg of month at most. That cold, pale and clotted with blood human rest was torn from the roots.

  When they reacted, Celedonio proposed to bury the leg so that at least it was not eaten by some vermin. To Candid, no one could take the dragon away from his head, and while he was helping to make the hole to bury the leg, there was no longer any doubt about the impossibility of it being a boar.

  Since when a wild pig, however big, did these things!

  6

  The morning after the night Irene's son had been abandoned, Laura Lopezosa left home early, before her father or sister got out of bed. After spending a night full of cold sweats and terrible remorse, she left, with the greatest determination and impetus experienced in his life, in search of the baby, having the absolute certainty that that would probably be the last time she crossed the mansion door threshold of the hundred fires street. Therefore, she went into the Burnt Willow forest without any fear, despite the fact that she believed to be true, since she was at least three years old, the legend that told that in the depths of the place existed old goblins and deranged gnomes that were irremediably enraged when someone passed through certain parts of their territories. Whoever dared to do so, they attacked all at once, as if they were a well-trained army, leaving that person dead quickly and at the mercy of hungry animals.

  She walked for a while. She was in the same places where Sir Higinio took her when she was little. That way she knew there was no danger. Besides, she thought that her father should have followed that same route, perhaps out of habit. Fortunately, she was right because it did not take her long to hear the torn tears of the child she was looking for. She went to meet him as a hysteric. What she observed when arrived was filled her with terror: a wild beast the size of three sheep, with a bleeding and deep wound on one side, sniffed and sucked the part of the child where his leg should be. Laura did not know what to do. She was paralyzed with fear, but suddenly the child, drowned by his crying, turned his head and looked at her with desperate eyes. Laura Lopezosa then reacted and threw a stone at the beast —that was the first thing she had found— and the animal, at once, shot out at her in a clumsy and crazy way. Laura dodged it without difficulty, took the terribly mutilated child, who no longer cried, and ran with all her strength. The boar turned round and chased the human being who had mocked it.

  The woman zigzagged through the trees, which markedly delayed the boar. The girl never supposed that she could develop such speed while running, even though she could not do it in a straight line. Though fear kept her from delving into it, she was proud of the easy way in which she had snatched the baby out of the beast's jaws and moved more skilfully through the forest than this one. Anyway, she was immediately aware that she could not stand that rhythm until she reached the town. Besides, she suspected that the address she had taken was not exactly the right one. She was getting lost in the forest that scared her so much as a child... And she could not stop.

  Not long before Laura Lopezosa arrived, in her amazement, to a place that was completely known to her. It was a small clearing where a pair of huge rocks rested, one next to the other. The first had the shape of a mountain with a very smooth ramp on one side and vertical on the other. The second was almost the statue of a huge sperm whale. Laura remembered how, when she was eight or nine years old, she asked her father to take her to play "The Whale’s Rock", knowing that with Sir Higinio, who never took for granted the legends of that forest, no regiment of gnomes he would stalk. One day she gathered courage and managed to jump from the first rock to the marine animal. From then on, whenever she went to the clearing, she ended up on " The Whale’s Rock", and she played that it was an intrepid marine capable of subduing the whales of the immense ocean, getting even to tame them and ride on them, thus moving from an island to other. Then she did not dare to go down, but her father was waiting for her on the floor, with open arms, when she launched herself from the place where the nostrils would be, if it were a real whale.

  Laura climbed the rock ramp in the shape of a mountain and noticed how her legs responded badly to this uphill slope not expected. There was no time to calculate the risks of her next move. Besides, she knew she could do it, because it was not the first time. She took all the momentum she could and without thinking, jumped to the stone whale. She almost slipped and fell on her back, due to the moss on the rock was full of morning dew; but some protective angel must have taken pity on her, and what could have been the end, only stumbled.

  The boar did not dare to jump and went down to find another way to climb. It did not find it, so it lay down to wait, hidden by the morning mist, its bloody eyes lit and stalking. Meanwhile, Laura, sitting on the flat surface of the cetacean rock, where a pleasant solar heat was beginning to fell, looked for the box of the miraculous black earth with brown pinches. As she opened it, she asked to God that the witch who nursed the baby in his day would have told her the truth when she entrusted those grains of sand to her.

  She w
as very nervous and, as it could not be otherwise, the box slipped between her hands scattering the sand through the air. To his own surprise, she cried out in anger. A hoarse and wild scream that did not seem to come from the throat of such a beautiful and delicate girl. The boar looked up to check that everything was still in place.

  The boy had his eyes closed for a long time. Laura did not want to check if he was dead, although everything certainly indicated it. She worried about stopping the bleeding in the baby's groin that now seemed to take on new vigor. She had to slow it down as no matter what. She tried to break her skirt, but the fabric was too strong. She remembered that underneath she wore three white fabric petticoats. She left the boy on the rock, stood up and lifted her skirt. The boar sat up when it saw someone moving upstairs. It stared at her and Laura could not help feeling a kind of stupid modesty as she removed one of the petticoats. She picked up the boy again and barely covered the wound in his leg with the petticoat folded. Then it was when she saw it by chance: in a hollow of the stone, there were traces of the scarring sand. She tore off a piece of the thin petticoat and rubbed it across the area where the black dirt was, with such force that she took away some of the moss and stone. The piece of clothing impregnated with magical sand dust replaced the one that served as a stopper, which, if it had been a little longer, would have begun to drip blood.

  The child's face changed automatically. His skin went from being pale to flush and the eyes, which he kept closed until then, opened suddenly. One of his little hands clung tightly to Laura Lopezosa's dress, and pulling it exposed one of her breasts. The boy sat up a bit and began to suckle in a kind of reflex. Laura did not want to consider how that miracle was possible. She promised herself to look for that witch from Poplar Village, so afraid of the devil, to give her a hug and show her all her gratitude. The baby, meanwhile, sucked without being able to extract anything, but at least it remained without crying, with eyes wide open and cheerful, and inexplicably alive!

  7

  Laura, as the minutes went by, began to be calmer, despite everything. The boy was staring at her as when they both were in Sir Higinio’s mansion. She carefully knotted the piece of petticoat that protected the terrible wound to the baby's body. There was no protest. Laura stroked his small belly and he smiled happily. After giving him a couple of kisses, she held him tightly in her breast. He coughed due to the squeeze and then sneezed, filling his nose and mouth with mucus. He did not like this and started crying. Laura wiped the baby's face with the sleeve of her dress and curled it in her arms and sang the "The Princess Tree” song, exactly as she would have done it if she tried to calm his crying in the protection and comfort of her room in Sir Higinio’s mansion. It did not take many stanzas to silence him.

  Not long after, it happened

  that a terrible Dragon from the South came

  to silence the peace that reigned

  in that Kingdom located

  far from any place searched.

  And the princess was not crying anymore.

  One thousand feet tall

  and with its three heads it saw

  the terrified crowd flee.

  Dark green was its color.

  Red blood all around it.

  And the princess was not crying anymore.

  The villages fell flat

  with only one of its footsteps.

  At every step it walked

  thousand leagues, ramming

  and with its fire burning.

  And the princess was not crying anymore.

  A courageous man

  before the beast in situ.

  A sword wielded,

  and with the fury of his entire lineage

  He wanted to force the monster to leave.

  And the princess was not crying anymore.

  The very strong Dragon laughed,

  then his fire spat.

  The hero dodged it,

  and even got to hurt the Dragon

  but in the end the beast with him finished.

  And the princess was not crying anymore.

  The good King was dismayed.

  From his palace his kingdom was watching

  and while worried he wondered:

  How would he protect the wonderful tree

  before this great danger?

  And the princess was not crying anymore.

  Until the door arrived

  of the royal palace, the Dragon.

  The court was terrified.

  Before the tree it was.

  And stepped on it.

  And the princess was not crying anymore.

  Then the great tree

  the branches lengthened to the animal,

  so they rolled

  and his whole body surrounded it.

  The beast was suffocating.

  And the princess was not crying anymore.

  The Dragon, with its last breath,

  from a branch of the tree fire it made.

  The reptile died but it burned

  the tree, without anyone approaching it.

  They did not know if the beast was dead.

  And the princess was not crying anymore.

  Finally a brave approached

  and quickly the fire dissipated.

  For this he used

  the water from the well that was

  near the fire already extinguished.

  And the princess was not crying anymore.

  The gardeners hurried.

  The wonderful tree they sanitized.

  See it again as it was

  It was what they were looking for.

  In this they only worked.

  And the princess was not crying anymore.

  The fast tree that was

  and there was no hunger, it was

  the meat that harbored

  the Dragon among the people divided.

  Everyone participated in the food.

  And the princess was not crying anymore.

  The boar was incorporated just when it began to hear the children's song and during the first stanzas it kept attentive to not know very well what. If it had been able to understand the lyrics, perhaps it would have identified with the Dragon and its ending would keep it restless, but since it only heard the sweet melody of Laura's lips, it immediately lay back, divided between a sweet stupor and the warning by the prey that watched.

  A year later there was a great drought.

  The crops, without water, did not survive.

  The people of thirst were dying.

  The rivers and seas dried up.

  The soil on the ground cracked.

  And the princess was not crying anymore.

  Suddenly the branches turned

  in a thousand sources that emerged

  a thousand jets that with the ground gave,

  making furrows that a thousand rivers formed

  that until the end of the Kingdom they arrived.

  And the princess was not crying anymore.

  It did not take more than a day

  the greenness to overcome the drought.

  Thanks to the water that flowed

  large harvests were collected

  and all before their dates.

  And the princess was not crying anymore.

  Two years later it spread

  for the Kingdom a great flood.

  The channels did not delimit

  the rivers, lakes and seas

  that there was no one to count.

  And the princess was not crying anymore.

  Black and stormy clouds

  Unleashed their capricious fury.

  While people were drowning

  the King was hopeful.

  Attentive to the princess tree watched.

  And the princess was not crying anymore.

  Suddenly the branches turned

  in hurricane wind vending machines

  that the clouds dragged,

  transforming all and one of each

  in its de
ath, that is, nothing

  And the princess was not crying anymore.

  When the clouds were scattered,

  by the roots all the standing water

  was absorbed, while soaking

  in the earth the water that remained.

  Everything was as it was.

  And the princess was not crying anymore.

  Not for so much work

  the tree had to go bad.

  Its structure still was

  which was in the beginning,

  without forgetting any loophole.

  And the princess was not crying anymore.

  The boy had fallen asleep and Laura stopped singing. She removed the cloth with the magic powders very slowly and she saw a perfectly healed stump. It was very sad to see the baby with his recent mutilation, but placidly slept, it seemed rather that he had been born without a leg and not that he had only been like that for a few hours.

  Some time after it was fully dawn, the beast must have heard or smelled Desiderio, Celedonio and Candid and it went bored and hungry in its search.

  8

  The three hunters felt the boar coming by the trembling of the earth and the sound of the branches breaking. They swarmed each one to a tree and when the animal passed, they riddled it with their knives, accurately thrown. Candid fired his old crossbow twice. One of the arrows was in one eye. The animal half blind and upset by pain began to go from one place to another, emitting chilling squeals of death. In its fury, a pointed stick stuck out from the trunk of the tree where Desiderio was perched. The tree suffered a strong shake and the man had to hold on well not to lose his balance and fall. At the moment, the animal collapsed on the floor almost lifeless, splitting the stick of the tree and leaving it, therefore, inside its body.

  The men descended from their hiding places with caution and when took some confidence, they approached the boar and opened more the cuts, but without approaching their fangs, which could still give them a dislike. Celedonio Butcher seized a pine branch about five centimeters in diameter and hit the animal's head —"just in case, better to stun him," he said— until the stick split in two halves.