The Wicker King

by K. Ancrum

  “Are you busy?”

  “No,” she said, tying her hair up in a sloppy bun on the top of her head. “I was just doing some reading.”

  “What kind?” August took off his shoes, placed them neatly by the door, and sprawled across her couch.

  “Fairy tales.”

  August grinned. “You still read fairy tales?”

  “Every part of the human condition is packaged neatly in fairy tales. Every bit of culture that makes us who we are.” She tutted at him. “When I was a girl, such things were regarded with respect.”

  “I’ve always had trouble with that,” he replied dryly.

  Rina scoffed and settled down on the floor. “I know. But one day you’ll learn it. All virtues not granted at birth are taught to you by life, one way or another. My mother told me that.”

  “Your mother sounds wonderful,” August said, closing his eyes.

  “She was.”

  THE KINGDOM

  Jack lay on his back on Rina’s carpet. She had gone to work hours ago, but she didn’t mind if they stayed. Jack brushed his hand lazily against the fibers like he was stroking the edges of a current. August smoked next to him and stared out the window. He flicked his lighter on and off.

  “Can you describe it to me?” August said suddenly. “I want to hear all of it. I want to hear what I look like. What I’m wearing.”

  Jack closed his eyes. “Sometimes it changes. At first, you were wearing a mask. This big, feathered thing made of bone and gold with a long, pointed nose like a hawk. It was scary at first, but I got used to it. After the time that we fought at the river, you don’t wear it anymore—I just see you. Sometimes you’re in regular clothes and sometimes, like now, you’re wearing leather armor and boots. It suits you.”

  August ran a hand down his sweater.

  “Your hair is wilder, too. Not plastered down and combed like you like it.” Jack reached out and August handed him his cigarette. He blew the smoke up.

  “Back near town there are silver birds that are as bold as pigeons. They get really close to us sometimes. There are things like cows, but they have an extra set of horns and their legs are too long. Everyone is very tall. The houses in the city are made of sticks and mud and reinforced with wood and gold. The people here don’t seem to think gold is rare, because it’s all over everything. Right now we’re not by all the buildings, though. We’re on a hill near a burned and rotting forest. It’s very dark and I can barely see either sun through the gloom or fog or whatever.” Jack took another drag and handed the cigarette back with a grimace. “It’s terrifying.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  August put out his cigarette. “What’s it like when you close your eyes?” he asked.

  Jack just sighed and ignored him.

  THE WICKER KING

  Jack shoved a crumpled piece of paper in his hands as he passed him in the hall. August uncrumpled it in his next class and spread it out neatly across the desk. He read the message that was penned in Jack’s blocky slapdash handwriting:

  We need to talk. I saw this written on a wall. You know where … anyway, I wrote it down quickly because I thought it might help:

  The rob in the roan

  The biggleby’s sown,

  And grown!

  For who can call its own?

  For fee be we who wiggle must

  Through doom and dust

  But vain in trust

  And Rapturous Blue, most fiery blust

  Stands firm in the Hall that bends for us all.

  But.

  When the Cloven King rises will and whey

  The Bigsbanes scatter and the Worrig pray

  And Gorgon swees the morth and may

  For fain will comest, direst day!

  The blowings’ blowing and the coldings’ colding

  And the biggleby’s scritch-scratch wanes and dies

  And the gallumps burst with rules and lies

  Because the Fortentook draws ever nigh!

  Will the Bigsbanes weep and the Gorgon cry,

  “The Wicker King comes, for you nor I?”

  The Wicker King. August shivered from the back of his neck down to his toes. Then he shoved the paper in the deepest part of his backpack and tried not to think about it.

  ANALYSIS

  “Jack, that is gibberish.”

  “You’re telling me this like it’s news.”

  August stared at Jack, then stared at the paper, then looked back up at Jack.

  “Stop looking at me like that. It totally makes sense if you look at it long enough. Kind of like analyzing a poem for English. Like the bigglebys have to be some kind of crop or, like, a term for general agricultural prosperity? I don’t know. The only thing I’m sure of is that the Cloven King is bad. People are relying on the Wicker King, and whatever he used to protect them in the hall of whatever is gone and needs to be returned or shit will hit the fan. Are you up for it?”

  “Up for what? What can we even do?” August said, slumping over his desk.

  “Personally, I think we should save them. It sounded pretty dire. And just because they’re not a part of this world doesn’t mean they’re worth less than we are. That is prejudice.” Jack sniffed dramatically. “Anyway, you’re a lot better than me at analyzing poetry, so can you just look at this for me and figure out what we’re supposed to do?”

  “Jack. This won’t fix the problem,” August said darkly.

  They both knew what problem he was referring to.

  “I know,” Jack said. “But please.”

  MONKEY WRENCH

  August stashed the poem in his bag for a week. He didn’t like looking at it.

  Peter and Roger were giving him knowing gazes all the time and, quite frankly, it was beginning to get on his nerves.

  Homecoming was in two days.

  Two of the drug runners he worked with had gotten caught, so Daliah pushed their workload onto him and it was making him nervous. He liked the extra money, but not enough to risk serious jail time.

  Jack’s parents hadn’t been home in ages and that made him anxious, too. Jack seemed to be all right with it. But it was hard not to be concerned when your best friend went home every day to darkness and food from a can.

  His back had been hurting lately, too. It was a dull, persistent ache along his shoulders and up his neck. Probably stress. What else would it fucking be?

  FRIDAY, UNDER THE BLEACHERS

  “Hey, boy, hey.”

  August cracked open an eye and gazed up.

  “Come get me at eight tonight?”

  He closed his eyes again.

  “You didn’t forget that tonight’s the dance, did you?” Gordie huffed.

  “I didn’t forget,” August said tiredly. “I got a suit ready and everything.”

  Gordie bent down lower to get a closer look at him. “You look unusually ragged. Like exhausted and shit.”

  August just gave her the finger and closed his eyes. “I’m doing my best, kid. Take it or leave it.”

  Gordie laughed and sprinkled some grass over his face. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Get some sleep, babe. And don’t forget: pick me up at eight.”

  FRENCH CUT SILK

  “Come here,” August said. “I can’t believe no one taught you how to do this.”

  “Well, you know. My dad’s not around a lot … so…”

  Jack tilted his head back. August laughed nervously as he tied his friend’s bow tie.

  It was soft. The moment was soft.

  “Why aren’t you getting dressed at Carrie-Anne’s? You know she likes that stuff. You know? Matching and crap,” August said, pulling the fabric gently.

  “So do you, you dick,” Jack shot back. “But yeah … I don’t think she’ll give me any time to myself at Homecoming, so … I just…”

  Jack shrugged helplessly. He couldn’t finish. He never did.

  August just sighed and tugged the knot tight.

  HOMECO
MING

  His mother had taught him to waltz. She had been in pageants. A real glamour girl with her tiara on straight and a smile like a thousand diamonds. Hand cupped just so to wave with grace to the cheering crowd. She came from money; they thought learning those sort of things was important.

  The only waving she did now was at him sometimes when he went to school, and the only thing cheering was the television in the basement. But she hadn’t always been that way.

  So August knew where to put his hands and he knew where to place his feet. He knew to rub the back of Gordie’s neck with his thumb to make her shiver. She pressed against him tightly.

  Across the room, Jack watched.

  He was with Carrie-Anne of course. She had shoved herself into a bright pink monstrosity and piled her hair up high on her head in some kind of curl nest. They were doing the traditional sway-from-side-to-side dance that pretty much everyone else was doing. Jack smirked at August over Carrie-Anne’s shoulder.

  August rolled his eyes and decided to ignore him. He leaned his forehead against Gordie’s neck. She smelled sweet, like incense and hair spray.

  “Do you want to go back to mine? My parents won’t be back till…”

  “Yes. Fucking yes,” he said.

  BANG BANG

  They tumbled to the carpet and Gordie slammed his head against the door. It was like being pillaged. He liked the roughness. He didn’t care where it came from.

  When she tore his tie off and dug her hands into his pants, he practically collapsed. He was all shaking hands and breathy gasps to her sharp claws and shouted expletives.

  Gordie rode him like he wasn’t made of skin and bone.

  August smoothed her hair out of her face tenderly, but she batted his hand away. He rubbed his thumbs into her hips, so she bit his neck. He scratched his fingers against the shaved part of her head and she made a pretty, pretty noise. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes as she ate him alive.

  When she pulled him back roughly by his hair, August gasped, arching off the floor.

  She wasn’t allowed to do that. No one did that except him. He reached up a hand to pull her arm off him, but she swiveled her hips and it was too late.

  He fell. Groaning. Thinking of chapped lips, strong arms, and freckles.

  FRET

  Peter snatched the poem from August’s hand and glanced at it quickly. “This is gibberish,” he said. Roger peered over his brother’s shoulder with interest.

  “No. It’s not,” August insisted. “I need you to analyze it so I can figure out what Jack and I have to do.”

  “What you have to do is get him to a psychologist,” Peter said dryly.

  “But—!” Roger chimed in before August could respond to the threat. “We’ll take a look at it for you. So far, it looks like some kind of quest.”

  August nodded solemnly. A quest. He could do that. At least it wasn’t telling him they had to kill people.

  “We’ll get back to you tomorrow. You can go.” Peter waved him away.

  August scowled at Peter’s rudeness, but picked up his backpack off the grass and left the twins alone under the bleachers.

  FIRST RECEIVER FALCON

  August met him in front of the locker room right after the game. Jack stumbled in with the rest of the team. He took off his scrum cap and wiped the sweat and dirt from his face.

  “We are in the very middle of the country,” he panted, with no preamble whatsoever. “Where the government is located. We move through their world like they move through my field of vision. Which means most people can’t see you, but they know you’re there. Also, the layers concept we’ve been discussing was actually more spot-on than we originally thought. I’m pretty sure places here actually coincide directly with places in the capital city.”

  “When did you figure this out?”

  Jack smirked. “Well, I’m reasonably certain the pitch out there is a marketplace. It was really fucking distracting with all the stalls and people popping up and phasing out. One of the goalposts was a fountain for at least half the game.” Jack shook his head.

  “Wow. I don’t even know what to say…” August was horrified. He’d had no idea it was that bad already. “Well, I gave the poem to the twins. They’re helping us. Maybe they can figure out—”

  “What?! Why?”

  August rolled his eyes. “I’ll explain later. Get dressed and meet me at the toy factory around six o’clock. Your teammates are starting to stare.”

  SICK TRICK

  Jack pulled into the toy factory employee parking lot and turned off his engine. “Why did you give the poem to the twins?” Jack demanded through the window. He didn’t sound happy.

  August slid into the passenger’s seat. “Peter noticed something going on with you months ago and he came to me about it. Roger found out by default. Their mom is a psychologist. I couldn’t do anything about it. They figured it out, so now they’re involved. They promised not to tell anyone if we don’t hurt anyone or don’t get hurt ourselves…” August trailed off as Jack narrowed his eyes.

  “What? I can’t do anything about it now,” August continued. “We’re deadlocked with them right now. Our actions dictate their response. The twins are methodical like that.… Though, your conjecture is a good advancement for us. Honestly, the quicker we fix this, the better.”

  “Fix this?” Jack asked, his hands gripping the steering wheel tightly. “Is that why I’m supposed to meet you here”

  “We have to test the limits of your sight and make a map so we can navigate the city in relation to our town. I figured here would be as good a starting place as any…”

  Jack was silent awhile, staring through the windshield. “I’m going to do this by myself. I don’t need you for this anymore,” he said quietly.

  “No! You can’t just—we’ve gotten so far already. Don’t cut me out, Jack. Please.”

  “Get out of my car.”

  “No!”

  “Get the fuck out of my car!” Jack shouted.

  August slammed the door hard behind him. He didn’t look back as Jack tore out of the parking lot and sped off into the night.

  COMMUNION

  August’s legs pulled him from the town to the heart of the woods. It was over a mile away. The wind whipped against his face, numbing his cheeks and stinging his eyes. He gathered branches, ripping them from trees and pulling them from the forest floor, ignoring the tug and scrape of the bark on his hands. He worked mindlessly, robotically. Bending and standing and dropping and bending and standing and dropping.

  When the brush reached the swell of his thighs, he set it ablaze. The flames were as tall as he was.

  August collapsed against a tree and slid to the ground, his feet swollen in his shoes, palms bleeding and dirty. He lay there like a dead thing. Eyes wide and glassy, staring into the flames.

  It burned deep into the night.

  August waited until the last ember sank into black. Then he climbed slowly to his feet, knelt by the charred remains, and sank his fingers into the ash.

  RAW

  This “world” wasn’t real. But it was real for Jack, so that made it real for him. This was a decision. August was choosing this. He wasn’t Alice falling unaware down the rabbit hole—that was Jack.

  August?

  He’d seen Jack fall and sprinted toward the pit; August had leaped off the edge and dove headlong into the darkness behind him. He would pull them both out of the deep with his bare hands.

  It was the debt. The river. It was his religion now.

  And such a thing was worth more than the mountains and the seas.

  REMUS

  He walked back to town and straight to Jack’s house. To his surprise, Jack’s mom opened the door when he knocked. She hadn’t been home in weeks. He frowned at her with undisguised disapproval.

  “Hi, August. May I help you?”

  “I need to see Jack.”

  Jack’s mom looked concerned. “I don’t know if you should. He�
��s not feeling very well.”

  “Even more reason that I should see him. I’m the only one who ever does anything about it anyway,” August said meanly.

  He pushed past her and headed up the stairs. August opened Jack’s door without knocking and shut it behind him. Jack was crouched in the corner in the dark, his head buried in his arms. August strode fast to him and dropped to his knees. He lifted Jack’s face and gripped it tight in his hands.

  “I was just scared,” Jack whispered.

  “I know.” He wiped a tear from Jack’s cheek, smearing his face with ash.

  “Don’t leave me.”

  August shut his eyes. “I won’t.”

  CULTURAL STUDIES

  Rina took off her apron and scooted into the booth with them. Jack pushed the poem across the table to her, then leaned back in his chair as she read. She’d taken her hair down out of the tight bun she always wore for work. By the time she got to the bottom of the page, she was frowning.

  “What does it mean?” August demanded.

  “I only took half a semester of folklore at the community college, so—”

  “You’re the best we’ve got right now,” August interrupted. “Anything you can give us would be good.”

  Rina tapped a bobby pin on the paper and looked thoughtful. “So, the Wicker King is from a game you used to play when you were kids, right?” They both nodded. “What were the rules?”

  “It was an imagination game. More of a power play than anything else, I’m beginning to realize,” Jack said dryly. “It was a classic adventure story. Pretend hunting, pretend feasts, pretend sword fighting with sticks.”

  Rina squinted. “If I were to compare this poem to others I’ve seen, it’s kind of like a really simple rhymeless lai. Or a prophecy of some kind. If you scrap the nonsense words and only focus on the words in English, it’s a pretty simple narrative.”