by Kate Seidel
Chapter Three: Let’s Start Walking!
Coju scrambled back in fright, tripping on the discarded sack. Spider monkeys were his utmost fear. They were so innocent and thus, EVIL! Moon gasped excitedly and went right up to him. Emrys snickered at Coju, who was now on the ground shaking and staring up at the monkey, who Moon was letting run around her shoulders.
“You’re a monkey lover. I like you!” Jamaku the monkey said. Moon laughed. Emrys went up to the monkey named Jamaku and poked its head rather hard. Emrys’ hand was then, by a tiny hand similar to his own, pinched.
“Ow! Stupid monkey,” Emrys muttered. Jamaku glared with his beady eyes.
“Stupid human,” he retorted. If Coju hadn’t been totally terrified of Jamaku, he’d like the little guy. But Jamaku was SCARY.
“Jamaku will be scouting the areas around you for danger. He’s four hundred years old, so he can survive on his own. You shall very rarely see him, but he will alert you if there’s trouble,” the wizard said. Coju visibly relaxed.
“Well, off you go!” the wizard exclaimed. He clapped his hands twice and the four mammals vanished.
Emrys, Coju, and Moon landed on a grassy field in the middle of nowhere. Jamaku was nowhere to be seen.
“Where are we?” Moon asked. Coju shrugged. Emrys, however, answered.
“OBVIOUSLY we are on the Utopic Plains. Nothing but plain for miles and miles. To find any form of civilization we shall have to travel north. “
Coju asked angrily, “If you know so much, how far away is the Dragon’s Nest?”
Emrys smirked. “Twenty thousand, three hundred and seventy two miles.”
“Urg,” Coju mumbled. Moon hopped to her feet.
“Let us be walking far!”
Coju rolled his eyes. “Yes, let us be walking very far!” he said in a falsetto tone. Moon whirled towards him, eyes flashing with lightning. Only this time, it wasn’t literal lightning. But for Coju, it could have been.
“You listen to me, Coju Pipe-Player! I would not like to be with you on this walk to dragon, I’d wish to be at my island playing with the monkeys. But I am on this big land with you and Emrys, and there is nothing I be doing for it! I will not like you make-funning of my talking-ways! Stop it now or you will be finding yourself covered in boils and blisters, with no magic-heal from me!”
To say the least, Coju was shaken. Emrys silently laughed his head off behind Moon. Moon turned on Emrys, who was caught in the act of a rude gesture.
“Emrys, you need to be nicer talking to Coju. He angers easily.”
Coju stared at Moon.
“That’s it?
I get the whole lecture, and he gets ‘be nice’?” Coju exclaimed.
“’He’ is not as nasty as you,” Emrys said. Coju scowled.
“Let us start walking now,” Moon commanded. Both boys followed meekly behind, each elbowing each other.
“Stop elbow jabbing!”
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After what seemed like centuries later, Coju collapsed on the thick-yellowed grass.
The warm muggy air had cooled pleasantly, and crickets chirped.
“Can’t…go…any…farther….”
Moon tugged on his noodle-like arm.
“Come up Coju Pipe-Player! We are almost out!” She encouraged. Coju shot up.
“We are? Where? Civilization?”
Emrys made a strange sound that sounded like he’d been breathing heavily and then tried to snicker.
“If this…is how you’re…going to be…maybe we should…have asked that meddling…wizard…for a different…hero….”
Coju glared. Moon said comfortingly,
“I know you have not left your house field for a long distance years, but Emrys has an idea point. You must embrace un-people house, or you will be sea the whole time.”
Coju was confused.
“She means you have to deal with it,” Emrys gasped. Moon glared.
“Well, she ACTUALLY said you have to embrace the wild or you’ll be miserable. Just like I am, being stuck with you.”
Moon smacked his arm.
“Well, she didn’t say that last part. That was I.”
Coju looked at Moon.
“Why aren’t…you tired?” He asked her. Moon shrugged.
“I don’t understand why you boys are so tired,” Moon replied, the clearest sentence Coju had heard yet. When both Coju and Emrys had no response, she called plaintively, “Get off the grass, I vision a people-place.”
“Do you mean…you see a town, Moon?” Emrys asked. Moon nodded.
In less than a minute both boys were running towards the lights in the distance.
“Silly boys,” Moon laughed. Then she was sprinting behind them.
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The town was called Immunopa, and the houses were filthy and poor. After attempting to reason with a crazy woman who tried to read their futures, the three questers found themselves at the only boarder house in the town. Moon knocked on the creaking door, Emrys and Coju standing behind her. A young woman with a patched dress and a long brown braid opened the door. She squinted at them, as if they were far away.
“What do you want?” She asked. She did not sound rude, or particularly polite.
“We want to stay here for the night,” Moon said in a practiced fashion.
“You got money?”
Moon replied, “No, but-”
“Sorry, girl. We don’t take you poor folk.”
And then the young woman slammed the door in her face. Moon looked as if she was going to cry.
“Why are people that are not Islanders so mean?” she whimpered.
Quickly, Emrys said, “It’s all good. We don’t have to spend the night inside,” he glared at Coju, “RIGHT, Coju?”
Coju scowled.
“I thought so, he agrees,” Emrys said loudly. Moon turned to Coju, eyes glistening.
“Truly?”
Coju fought a sarcastic remark and nodded.
Moon smiled. “Then back to the plains!” Groans issued from the boys. “Do not worry,” Moon consoled with a slightly demonic smile. “We will go far away from these people, the middle of the plains!”
More groans.
After many more hours of trudging through the fields, Emrys shouted ahead to Moon, “It’s almost daylight! We’ve been walking all night!”
Moon smiled back at them. “So what? I see a yellow path!”
Emrys and Coju squinted into the distance. There was, in fact, a golden brick road, shining like butter in the dawn sunlight. It looked very warm and soft. Granted, all three of these people were probably delusional from lack of sleep. There was a brick road, and it was gold, but be sensible, reader! Bricks in the first ray of sunlight would be slick with dew and colder than frost!
Nevertheless, all three teens ran for the brick road. They reached the road and were about to collapse when Emrys groaned, “We can’t stop here. I don’t like it.” Coju was more than ready to respond with something rather rude when Moon yanked him up from the sunbathed road by his hair. Walking very slowly, they inched down the banana yellow road. As the sun rose, Emrys grew a bit perkier…if there was such a thing.
“You know, my aunt ‘Faba’s been on this road before, if I recall correctly. My cousin too. They told me that there was a colony of little people calling themselves Munchkins and worshipping some fictional goddess named…Something with a ‘G’, I can’t quite recall…Sounded something like ‘Guild’…”
“Shut up, Emrys,” Coju grumbled. Emrys glared, but his monologue ceased. After about twenty minutes of walking, Moon crumpled to the groun
d, snoring. She sounded rather like a teapot. Emrys and Coju resignedly collapsed onto the buttery bricks.
“Coju?” Emrys whispered. Coju squinted at him. “What?” he growled. Emrys smirked wearily.
“I know absolutely everything,” Emrys announced, yanking up the green grass from beside the road absentmindedly. Coju sat up. He looked uneasy.
“Everything, you say?” Coju inquired.
Emrys nodded and laughed. “You didn’t realize how obvious you were being, I gather,” he replied. Coju smirked and lay back down. After a moment, he commented absently,
“You weren’t as subtle as you could have been, either…” A satisfied grin crept over his face as he heard Emrys stop breathing for a moment. As sleep washed over him, he mumbled, “Best man wins, I guess…”
Emrys grunted in assent.
