Uncanny Tales of Crush and Pound 9

by Christopher D. Carter

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  When the rain came, Pound was leaning forward with his hands on a rock. They had climbed several hundred feet up the side of the mountain, and when he looked down, all he could see was a cloud of fog between himself and the ground below. Lifting his head back, he opened his mouth and waited for the drops of rain to quench his thirst. With his eyelids closed, the heavy drops pelted his face, and he drank in the welcome rain. Then he heard that sweet familiar voice, and he knew he must continue climbing.

  “What are you waiting for?!” snapped the dwarf with an annoyed tone. “It’s raining so hard, we’ll have to swim to the top soon!” Pound wondered why he had chosen to travel with this little green fellow, and then he remembered Crush and the slaves below. If he chose to quit now, there was little hope in their salvation.

  “I’m coming,” he said as he pushed upward through the storm. Looking down at the tree as it slowly made its way up the trail behind, Pound could sense that the tree’s roots were craving some much needed nourishment. He hoped that the rain would at least appease its thirst for the time being. “How much further?” he asked and realized that he sounded like a five year old on a field trip.

  “A few hours,” Shad replied and kept climbing up the trail along the side of the rocky cliff. Loopy from exhaustion, Pound laughed when he heard the answer, and he knew that he was becoming too tired to finish this adventure. With a heavy breath, he chose to disobey the dwarf’s wishes for a time, and he sat down on the table of a flat rock to rest. The tree kept moving as he rested, and he leaned his back against the cold, wet stone to close his eyes again. The sound of the rain as it struck the surface of the mountain was so refreshing, and he was so tired that he was finding it hard to think about anything but sleep.

  “I’ll only rest for a moment,” he thought. “Just a moment.” Then Pound’s mind began to wander through space and time. Soon he found himself in a shower with the water pouring over his head. “But why are my clothes on,” he thought as he rubbed his eyes under the steady stream of water. As he looked through the foggy glass of the shower door, someone moved on the other side. By the shape, he could tell that it was a lady, though he could not tell just who she was. He placed his hand on the glass of the door and wiped a streak across it with his hand, but the layer of mist stayed on the surface of the glass, separating him from the person on the other side. Reaching over to the door, he tugged on the handle, and the sliding door rolled, and rolled, and rolled. The width of the door was enormous and immeasurable as it rolled past, and still there was a door between himself and the woman on the other side. It was as if he could do nothing to eliminate the foggy glass between the two. She stepped forward and placed her hand on the glass, and Pound placed his palm on hers in turn. Then she tilted her head and leaned her face against the glass, and he recognized her through the mist.

  “Sherry?” he whispered, and a shadow crossed his face and blocked the rain momentarily. Then Pound saw the open palm and felt the loud slap as it met his face.

  “Wake up!” the voice shouted, and everything came back around to where he was: on a mountainside with a crotchety dwarf. When he opened his eyes, Pound saw the outline of leaves and branches above the green man, and he sat up and shook the rain from his hair. Feeling the sting in his jaw from the blow, he glared at Shad as the water dripped across his face.

  “I was dreaming about a lady, and then you had to wake me up!” Pound explained.

  “This is no time for sleep. We have to get to the Queenmother’s den!”

  “We’ve been going through the night! Why couldn’t you just let me sleep?!”

  “There will be time for sleep soon enough. The Queenmother’s home is magical, and she has cast a protective spell that is making you sleepy. If I leave you to sleep, you may never wake up,” Shad answered with that same smirk that he seemed to always wear. Perhaps he had judged him too quickly, and Pound decided to listen to the dwarf’s warning. He stood to his feet and stretched his legs and arms before he began to climb the cliff trail. Satisfied with his attempt, Shad led Pound and his tree guardian up the trail. Pound could have climbed into the tree and let the tree do the work, but he decided that if he was going to stay awake, then he was going to have to hike the trail.

  The rain stayed a light drizzle as they hiked upward through the cloud, and there seemed to be no break in the mist by which they could see what lay ahead. Then Shad stopped and turned his head to listen to the sounds of the rain. Pound and the tree kept hiking along the steps until Shad returned a scowl down at them for moving. Pound took the hint, and they all stopped together to listen to the mist. For a few moments, there was nothing out of the ordinary, and Pound wondered why there was a sudden change from go, go, go, to stop. He was just about to start moving again when a shadow passed above in the cloud, and Pound studied the rivulets of steam and air that trailed the shade as it moved across the sky above. Though no one could see the source of the dark shadow that passed through the clouds above, they could feel the tension rise as they speculated at what lay ahead. With a fell swoop, a colossal beak pierced the cloud and snapped in the air next to Pound’s shoulders, barely missing his head. Then the black wings of the speeding bird flapped inward and contacted him across the midsection, causing Pound to lose balance on the ledge. Falling forward, he landed mercifully in the foliage of the tree that climbed below him. Undaunted in its attempts, the bird flapped its mighty wings to hover in the air and used its beak to snip at Pound again and again as he climbed down into the protection of the crown of the tree’s outer branches. Shad pinned himself against the face of the cliff in terror at the attack of the bird, and he tried his best to hide in plain sight as he nervously shook in his shoes. The giant bird then opened its talons and snatched onto the treetop as it flapped its black wings to stay aloft. Pound hurriedly commanded the tree to attach its roots to the ground, and the tree complied with the orders to the best of its abilities on the cliff face, yet the tactic proved insufficient. The roots stretched in the shallow soil and rock, and the bird began to take flight with the tree in tow. For all of the shaking in fear that Shad was doing, the dwarf surprised Pound as he miraculously leaped from the protective spot on the cliff wall and down into the limbs of the tree while the bird tugged the tree away from the side of the mountain. With a mighty tear of the root ball, the bird separated the tree from the surface of the mountain and began to beat its wings furiously to maintain its height in the air.

  The limbs and branches had pierced Shad’s clothing, and the dwarf struggled for a moment to get free of the wooden extremities. Seeing that his efforts were largely futile, Shad tore his outer garments in order to free his body’s movements. When he had ripped himself free, he climbed down into the inner limbs where Pound was balanced, and he braced himself against a rather large limb so that he could speak.

  “This is what I feared most,” Shad said as he held onto the limb with arms and legs. “The birds that protect the Queenmother are deadly, and I am anxious that we shall not survive.”

  “It would have helped if you had warned me about this danger!” Pound snapped as the tree trembled with the beating of the bird’s wings. Then Pound threw a mental order out to the tree, and the timber responded in kind. With a whip of the limbs, the tree wrapped its many appendages around the legs of the bird, and the bird could not let go of its prey as it flew away from the mountain and hovered over the ant lion fields below. “It can’t drop us now,” Pound smiled with hope. “We may yet survive.”

  The bird beat its wings in a smooth wave of motion, and its head tilted down to look at the prey that was now attached to its body. With the glaring eyes of a demon, the fowl blazed its discontent at Pound and beat its wings with longer strokes as they began to rise higher in the air.

  “It can’t drop us, so what’s the fowl doing?” Pound asked the dwarf. Shad gaped at the bird and the direction of movement, and he seemed to recognize th
e intent.

  “The bird is taking us to the Queenmother,” the dwarf said with assurance, and Pound was a bit relieved at the thought of not having to climb the remainder of the trail.

  “Problem solved then, huh. You won’t have to keep me from falling asleep in the mist,” he said as he looked over at the dwarf with a smile. All appearances of distrust were drained from the pale green of Shad’s face, and Pound sensed that the dwarf would tell him the truth now.

  “Our troubles are just beginning, lad. The Queenmother placed the spells in the mountain air, and there are plenty more of those floating around for us to avoid,” Shad explained. “She is in control of her visitors, and it is rare that anyone visits her without asking. So don’t expect that she will welcome us as long lost friends,” he added. Pound thought on the dwarf’s words as they slowly ascended higher along the mountainside through the thick mist.

  “If that is true,” Pound wondered, “then how did you expect us to get there?” It was a fair question given the circumstances.

  “I didn’t,” he replied at the risk of drawing ire from the human. “There has never been any assurance that we could get to the Queenmother or that we could get our hands on the Soul of the Mountain. But you wanted to free your friend and the slaves, and so this has been our only choice.”

  “But you couldn’t do it without me then, could you?” Pound speculated, and the dwarf held his lips tight and looked away as if he had said more than he should. “Could you?” There was a long uncomfortable moment of silence in which neither one spoke, and Pound realized that he was accurate in his assumptions about the dwarf.

  “There are many things that you don’t know about this world or about the people that dwell here,” Shad said as he looked out across the mist covered mountainside. “We have our own lives, our own desires, our own goals. And our own fears. The mountain was once my home, and the Queenmother’s treachery separated me from it,” he said as he slowly wheeled around to face Pound. “And I would do whatever it takes and bring along whoever could improve the odds of restoring my home to me from that witch,” his eyes blazed in determination. “Your friend and your people will be freed if she is defeated. So the question is: can you help me?”

  The situation in which Pound found himself now was obscure to him. He could not recall being trapped in an environment that was riddled with such danger. With the portal closed in the tunnel to this world, he knew no other way out. Crush had been captured and arrested within the mountain. There were scores of people depending on his success, and his success was laid squarely on the outcome of the adventure with the dwarf that he now found himself. If he alienated Shad, he may never complete the task of retrieving the Soul of the Mountain. Subsequently, all of the other goals which were set before him would vaporize. To say that it was a tight spot would be an understatement.

  “Shad. I will help you, and that is evidenced by the fact that we are in the clutches of a giant bewitched bird and headed straight for the Queenmother,” Pound replied gently. “It would just be nice to know about the dangers before we come upon them.”

  “Look at me, human. I am not a fortune teller with a crystal ball. I am a cantankerous dwarf with a grudge,” he clarified, and Pound could not argue the logic since he was not a clairvoyant himself either, so he let the argument drop for the sake of the journey. If he had not, Shad would not have cared an iota. It seemed unnecessary to the dwarf that he should have to explain himself to a human.

  “I understand, Shad. Please forgive me for doubting you,” he humbly implored the dwarf above the thunderous sounds of the bird’s wings. The mist began to dissipate as they rose higher and higher up the mountainside, and to Pound’s delight, they soon found themselves under a clear red and violet sky as they flew nearer and nearer to the cliff wall. From their vantage point, there appeared to be a great cubicle notch that had been carved out of the side of the mountain, complete with a flat green field leading up to a columned doorway. As they watched, the bird flapped into the square and gently placed the root ball of the tree onto the flat surface of the ground. The bird continued to awkwardly hover as it could not let go of the tree’s branches, and Pound ordered the tree to reattach its roots to the soil that had collected upon the path. When he was convinced that the tree was stable, he released the tree’s hold on the bird, and the giant predator flew up onto the top of the wall alongside the square where it perched as if to observe the events that would unfold. Reluctant to leave the protection of the tree, Pound and Shad waited outside of the doorway in anticipation of some fell greeting from the witch, having no idea how she would perceive such an intrusion into her domain.

  Pound peered around in all directions, and save for the bird, there was no one hiding in the shadows. Then he turned his gaze upon the open doorway, and in the darkness deep within, he perceived a movement in the gloom of the cave. With a start, a light came on within the cavity, and the background interior walls turned to a muddy orange clay in color. Then Pound noticed a lady walking from the midst of the aisle, striding as if she were a model on a runway. Her hair flowed down to her shoulders in a wave of light blonde, and she wore only undergarments paired with a sleek cape of green that covered her effortlessly in her walk toward the columned door. Pound was struck by her beauty, and his eyes were trained on her as she marched closer to the square.

  “Pound, do not let her gaze draw you in,” Shad warned, and he placed his small hands across Pound’s eyes in an effort to break the spell before it could take hold. Pound closed his eyes and cleared his mind from all thoughts as he breathed in deeply. He then gently pushed the dwarf’s hands away.

  “Thanks again,” Pound uttered as he covered his own eyes with one hand and held onto the tree with the other. “She’s beautiful, Shad. I was expecting an old crusty monarch with wiry hair and a limp.”

  “Hmmph,” the dwarf replied with a grunt. “Appearances are not what they seem, and that holds true here,” he added, and then he ripped loose a swatch of his coat and handed it to Pound. “Tie this around your eyes, young one. It will help prevent her from getting into your mind,” he said with a frown. “This won’t be easy.” Pound turned his head to look away from the Queenmother as she approached, and he tied the smelly coat fragment around his eyes. He could still see the ground if he looked down, making it so that he was not completely incapacitated, but he hated the thought of not being able to see his enemy. Shad leaned his head down and looked up into the fold to Pound’s eyes and said with a wink, “Let me do the talking.”

  As she approached confidently and quietly, the Queenmother turned her gaze to the bird that had delivered them to her doorstep, and she read the bird’s expressions as it blinked and leaned its head to one side.

  “So, dwarf, you dare to enter my abode once again,” she scoffed to Shad from a distance. “Did you miss me?” she cackled.

  “Oh, yes, my dear. I missed the way you stole my home and threw me out,” he answered as he kept his place of safety within the tree.

  “Come now, can’t we let bygones be bygones. After all, it isn’t healthy for a family when the parents are fighting,” she replied and stepped a little closer to the tree. “Would you mind coming down so we could discuss our differences a little closer?”

  “I don’t think so, my dear. We have come this far, thanks to your bird,” Shad said with one hand pointed to the black raptor as it eyed him from the top of the wall. “Quite a pet you have there, my queen. Do you like our friend, too?” he announced as he patted the trunk of the tree with pride. “He is quite the guardian.” She began to meander around the tree as she marveled at its manifestation in her square.

  “Yes, I recall just yesterday that there were no trees in my front yard. No matter,” she said with a wave of her hand. “It’s presence here is of no consequence. I will enjoy the magnificent shade.” The bird glided down from the perch above and landed next to the tree. With a surgical snip of i
ts beak into the foliage, the bird yanked the blindfold from Pound’s eyes, and knocked him off balance from the tree to the ground with the jerk of the cloth. Without thinking, he looked up and caught the lovely gaze of the Queenmother’s eyes, and he was instantly arrested in her beauty. She smiled as she held the human in her trap.

  “And what shall we do with you?” she posed the question to her new prisoner.

  Chapter 2

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  Enter the Dragon