Snotty Saves the Day

by Tod Davies

  Tuxton said a prayer. And Tuxton’s prayer was this: “I know that I am only a silly-looking stuffed Bear and that silly-looking stuffed Bears are not meant to fight. I know that I am going to lose and that everyone I know and love will lose with me. But now I am going to fight for one reason: because someone has to. And there is no one left but us who will.”

  That was what Tuxton prayed as he stopped by the edge of the Teddy Bear meadow, and offered up his one prayer to the hugeness of the Universe. What Tuxton prayed for was not Triumph, but Justice.53

  And then, shouldering his weapon, he joined the creatures pouring down the mountainside.

  “TUXTON!” Snotty shouted. His words blew back at him on the hot wind. “TUXTON! WAIT!” Of course Tuxton couldn’t hear. He marched on, and in a moment he would disappear over the rise.

  Snotty hobbled after him as fast as he could go. The Idea flapped behind him. Snotty grabbed at it, and it let go of his foot, grasping now onto the plush of his arm.

  “TUXTON!” Snotty yelled again, trying to go faster still. He followed the Bear over the rise. BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, he could hear. But when he got to where he could look down the mountain, he found he was alone. Snotty realized that he was on another path, one different than the one he had come up before. This path was lonely and straight and covered with fine white rock. It was the only way down. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he started down its pale slope.

  “WAIT!” he wailed, but there was no one there to hear. He could still hear that sound. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. He headed for that, when something jumped out and grabbed him.

  “Acckk!” Snotty shrieked as the Thing tackled him, wrestling him to the ground. “Get off! Leave me alone!” He punched at the Thing, and the Thing punched back. Wrapping his fingers around the Thing’s throat, he choked it. But the harder he choked it, the harder he found it himself to breathe.

  “What are you DOING?” he gasped. And the Thing gasped back. That was when Snotty saw its face. And he saw the Thing was him, too. It was Snotty. He was wrestling with his Self.

  So stunned at this was Snotty, and so frightened, that he let go, falling with a bump onto the rocky Path. His Self fell back, too, and sat there, staring.

  “Let me go!” Snotty said, but his voice sounded sulky, even to him. His Self didn’t answer. It just rubbed its neck where Snotty had tried to throttle it and gave him a reproachful look.

  “Look,” Snotty argued. “I have to get down there. I have friends in trouble.”

  “I’m not stopping you,” Snotty’s Self said in a hurt-sounding voice.

  But when Snotty tried to stand and walk down the Path, his Self tackled him and wrestled him to the ground again.

  “Erm! Urmph! URRRPP!” Snotty gasped as the two rolled and kicked at each other. The False Idea gibbered and squeaked, still clinging to Snotty’s arm. And Snotty saw another Idea clutching at his Self’s chest. It was the Idea that had kidnapped him from the Fortress of the Gnomes. But he didn’t recognize it.

  “Just STOP, why don’t you?” Snotty shouted, frustrated that he couldn’t get his own Self to obey. Instead his Self gave him a final push, and they went tumbling into the wood next to the Path, where they landed under a tall tree.

  “OOOHHPPPHHH,” Snotty said as his Self fell hard against him. It crushed the False Idea between them right up against Snotty’s face. “AAARRRPPHHH!” he said. With the False Idea smooshed there, it was hard to breathe.

  The two of them, Snotty and his Self, rolled around and around, in a well-matched tangle. As Snotty huffed and puffed and tried to get on top, he saw, over his Self’s heaving shoulder, Big Teddy. She stood at the top of the white stone Path. Snotty tried to call out, but his words were lost in the tangle with his Self.

  Big Teddy scanned the mountain looking for something or someone, and she didn’t see Snotty as he lay there, struggling with his Self. Instead she looked at the sky. There was a shriek from above. Snotty saw the Dragon flying hard overhead.

  “LOOK OUT!” Snotty tried to yell. But the False Idea squirmed against his mouth and crushed the words before they could get out.

  “EERRRUUUMMMPPPHHH!” Snotty wailed, helpless. He watched the Dragon spit out little gray jagged stones—Dragon’s

  Teeth.54 As they hit the ground, a thicket sprang up. Its twisting branches were tangled, thorny, and mean, and they threatened to cut off Big Teddy from the Plains and her fellows below. But a white figure leapt over the growing thicket’s top, landing at the Bear’s stubby plush feet. It was a little white horse, and it knelt so that Big Teddy could awkwardly mount.

  “SNOWFLAKE!” Snotty wailed, tearing the False Idea from his chest. Snowflake and Big Teddy turned his way. Snotty could see that Snowflake’s wound was healed. It had left a little silver nub between his eyes.

  BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. The hideous sound called again. And Big Teddy and Snowflake, losing no time, wheeled around. The thicket was growing—heaving and twisting fast. Another moment and it would be too late. Backing up, Snowflake reared, pressing back on his flanks and sprang up. And just as the wall of dark wood leapt up, he leapt too, just that much farther, and cleared it before it shut out the sky.

  BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.

  The black shadow of the Dragon passed overhead. Snotty was alone. And the wall of thorns between himself and his friends reached all the way to the sky, blotting out the sun.

  Chapter XV

  THE TOP OF THE WORLD

  It would be nice to say that this upset our hero. But the truth is at the bottom he was relieved. There was no way he could join the battle now. No one could expect him to get over that wall.

  “That’s a magic wall,” he said to his Self, who was busy kicking the False Idea. “Nothing I can do about that, is there? Not my fault it grew up.”

  Snotty’s Self was silent.

  Snotty had the feeling he should at least try to get over the wall. So he attempted to climb. But whatever branches he managed to get his foot on just collapsed under his weight. Annoyed, he grabbed at a branch overhead. A large thorn went through the base of his maimed finger, and bright red blood spurted out.

  He jumped back, sucking on the wound, but the blood wouldn’t stop. So at first he didn’t notice the dozens of small animals running down the thicket from the Tree Canopy above.

  Then he heard the screeching of the Dragon.

  All the animals of the trees fled from the sound: the frogs and the beetles and the caterpillars and the crickets and the pale pink shrimps and the blind white newts. A violet and blue Dragonfly fluttered in front of Snotty before darting for cover. And Snotty recognized the little pink Crab who had helped him find his Key. It recognized him, too, and scuttled up his arm, where it quivered with fear against his neck.

  Again the black shadow of the Dragon passed overhead.

  The Dragon enjoyed its work. It enjoyed seeing, with its sharp eye, the terror it caused in the smaller, weaker creatures down below. It took now to diving from the sky and plucking animals from the ground. With a writhing lizard or a terrified weasel in its claws, it would soar upward, letting the animal drop to the hard earth below.

  Snotty, caught up in the general panic, ran with the others, forgetting for now the sharp pain in his ankle. The Crab clung to his neck, its tiny pink claws dug into his skin. The next thing Snotty knew, bigger claws dug into his back. “Hey!” he yelled as he lifted off the meadow floor.

  “Close your eyes,” the Crab said in his ear, and Snotty knew this was good advice. He closed his eyes. He went higher and higher into the air. He could hear the flapping wings of the Dragon. Higher and higher they flew.

  It began to snow.

  Fat flakes landed on the back of Snotty’s neck, first slow, then fast enough to form a thick white sheet. He hoped the Crab was all right. He could feel it pinching still at the base of his neck, so he thought it was.

  Frozen with cold and breathing hard in the thin air, Snotty didn’t feel it when the Dragon let him go. He didn’t fall so much as tum
ble, and he was surprised that he didn’t have far to go. To his relief, he collapsed onto solid ground, a rocky outcropping of some sort. Or so he thought. It was hard to tell. The snow fell in thick sheets, and he and the Crab—who still clung to his skin—were soon covered with the stuff.

  As the snow fell and covered them, the cold disappeared, and it seemed to a drowsy Snotty that he was wrapped in a blanket that was soft and warm. “This IS nice,” he murmured, pleased. And, shutting his eyes again, leaning back against a snowy mound, Snotty forgot who and where he was.

  The snow covered his face. Snotty slept.

  Later the snow stopped. Snotty’s nose twitched from under a clean white curtain of snow. The Crab’s claw appeared, waving, as it dug its way out, and then came the Crab itself, clinging by a pincer to a lock of Snotty’s hair. It looked at Snotty, then, reaching out, it pinched. Hard.

  Snotty frowned. From somewhere in the deep, delicious hole he had fallen into, he could feel the pinch. But he refused to move.

  The Crab considered this. Then it began to dig. It dug a burrow down to Snotty’s side, and when it got there, it followed a trail of blood to his maimed finger. Taking hold of the base of the wound in one claw, it pulled tight.

  “YOW.” Snotty’s eyes shot open. He sat up, sending showers of powdery snow in all directions.

  The Crab held on. Snotty shook his hand. “Ow! Get off! Let go!” he yelled. But only when the Crab was sure that Snotty was wide awake did it let go and fall back to the snow below.

  Snotty shook his hand and sucked at it. He looked up—the air had cleared and he could see all around. He looked again. He caught his breath. He thought—no, he was sure—no, it couldn’t be—no, it was.

  He was sitting on the Top of the World.

  A light wind blew thin wisps of cloud in the now cold blue sky. There was nothing up where he was but air and cloud, and when Snotty looked down, mountains stretched out beneath him toward the plains. Snotty was at the top of the tallest peak.

  “Where am I?” he wondered, excited, all pain forgotten now. “Is this the Peak of Transcendence?”

  He looked around, though, and saw it couldn’t be. Because there, hanging off to the right, was the Peak of Transcendence itself. It was white. It was pure. It was unattainable.

  It was under him.

  “That’s impossible,” Snotty muttered. “The Peak of Transcendence is the highest Peak there is! Everyone knows that.” He shook his head, confused. Did everyone know that? Who said so? Who said that the Peak of Transcendence was the highest peak there was? Because, well, obviously it wasn’t. “THIS is the highest peak there is! Only, I don’t know its name.”55

  This troubled Snotty for a moment, until he remembered he could name the peak himself. The idea comforted him a little. Investigating further, Snotty found he was balancing precariously on a promontory jutting out over a sharp slope of big white rocks. Still exploring, and trying to figure out what to name this place, he brushed off the remaining snow and, standing upright, looked cautiously ahead.

  He could see far out over the Plains. A thin blue column of electricity appeared at the edge of a far off Sea, dancing along the horizon there.

  “Hey,” Snotty said, distracted. “What’s that?” He took a step forward to get closer to the beautiful blue light. And even though it was so far away, Snotty could hear it call to him.

  “BBBBZZZZZTTTTTT.”

  Snotty rubbed his eyes and shook himself, but when he opened his eyes again, the thin blue column was still there.

  “BBBBZZZZZTTTTT.”

  “It IS calling me,” Snotty thought, excited.

  “BBBZZZZTTTTTTT.”

  It was. It was calling him.

  With a dreamy smile on his face, Snotty put out his arms as if to hug the column, which snaked up and down the shores of the faraway Sea. Snotty took a step toward it onto a jutting rock.

  Snotty took another step. Then another. Then another.

  His left foot moved forward into the air above the rocky, snowdusted slope below. He was about to step into the void when a loud whooshing sound startled him. He looked down and saw what he was about to do. Losing his balance, he teetered first forward then backward. Up above, blocking the pale gold sun, was an enormous white bird.56 The wind made by the flapping of its wings reached Snotty, pushing him backward just enough so he could recover his balance. And with that, he threw himself back onto the ledge and grabbed hold of a leathery root growing there.

  He lay there breathing hard, afraid of what he had almost done. Shuddering, he shoved his hands into his pockets. When he did, he touched the Key. And when he pulled himself up, propping himself against a rock and looking out at the landscape again, everything was changed.

  The blue column was gone. Instead, the whole world spread out in front of Snotty. The whole of the world was at War. And he could feel it all.

  “No!” Snotty cried out. “I don’t want to know!”

  “Too bad,” the Key said as Snotty shoved it back in his pocket. “Too late now.”

  And it was. He couldn’t stay there forever, could he? He searched the horizon for the thin blue light. He was sure that it would tell him what to do. But it was gone now. All that was left was the War.

  Snotty took a deep breath and tested his bad ankle. It still hurt, but that didn’t matter much anymore. Now he knew what he had to do. There was no doubt about it at all. He lowered himself down the side of the mountain, onto the steep rocky slope below.

  As he skidded down the slope, he remembered the little pink Crab. Snotty scrambled back, though his ankle throbbed and the pain made him sick to his stomach. When he got back to the ledge on top, he scooped up the Crab and put it back on his shoulder. And then he hurried, as fast as he could, ignoring the pain that shot up his leg, back down toward the Plains.

  Chapter XVI

  MEANWHILE, ON THE PLAINS OF DESOLATION

  The battle was a horrible one. It was a massacre, the Big slaughtering the Small without mercy. The Bardic Gnome, platinum wreath on his brow, watched from a distant butte as the battle unfolded, contemplatively plucking a string on his lyre. “It will make another episode in the epic of the Gnomes,” he thought. And there and then he wrote that great epic poem, “The Slaughter of the Small,” composed on the battlefield for the greater Glory and future Fame of the Gnomes. Here it is in its entirety:There are much nobler sports than those that catch

  At niggling little irritating gnats

  And crush them underfoot as we go on

  To Gnomish Fame and Glory on our Lawn!

  The battle was beneath us, that’s a fact

  But ’long as we do win is the main act

  No Rebels can oppose our giant maw

  If only they weren’t stuffed, we’d eat them raw!

  (refrain) Hah, hah, hah, hah! Hah, hah, hah, hah! Ha-HA!

  Now listen, younger Gnomes, unto our tale

  Of how we strove to reach our snowy Grail

  The Sun God did rise up as was foretold

  And snuck into the Rebel Camp so bold

  He found his way upon the Path of Care

  That scrubby track that leads to Rebel Lair

  We followed him with all our derring-do

  To slaughter and wipe out that motley crew!

  The Rebels had no choice but stand and fight

  How stupid to oppose our awful might!

  Those mis’rable Girl Bears, we trussed their paws

  And shot a few more martyrs for the cause!

  (repeat refrain) Hah, hah, hah, hah! Hah, hah, hah, hah! Ha-HA!

  There was one Bear who lived to fight again

  She rose up and, determined, bit our man

  Who shooed her like an insect on his hand

  And stomped her till she smothered in the sand.

  The black and yellow Teddy rode her steed

  Into the midst of Gnomes she gave the lead

  To Fairy Tale Creatures, big and small

  I tell you, Gnomes
, we just destroyed them all!

  Those Pleasures Living and those Pretty Toys

  We never had such fun in killing joys!

  Although it was beneath us, it’s the truth

  That Gnomes delight in being without ruth!

  (repeat refrain) Hah, hah, etc.

  And let us not forget the noble Dog

  Alone among the rabble did us jog

  To feelings of good will and brotherhood

  His stand with trash can ne’er be understood

  He snarled at us and ran into the fray

  A flamethrower just blew him all away

  Big Teddy then was left without a shield

  We broke her pony’s knees until he yield’d

  And gloating then we finished up our game

  We pulled the Bear to pieces all the same

  Made sure her parts were scattered on the Plain

  So never will she e’er be whole again

  We won, we won, we won, we’re proud to say

  Tomorrow will there dawn a Gnomish Day

  With Gnomish rights and many Gnomish laws

  And no one left to tell us of our flaws!

  (repeat refrain ad infinitum until drunk or asleep)

  There was no epic poem left by the Bears. They left no words. There was nothing left at all. 57

  All that was left was the Wind as it screamed across the desolation of the Plains. The Wind bore the pieces of Big Teddy away. And howled over the lifeless battlefield.

  Chapter XVII

  A DOOMED ATTEMPT

  As Snotty ran from the Top of the World, he forgot everything but getting down to where the battle raged. He ran through meadows, and he ran through streams, and he ran through thickets, and he ran down boulder-strewn slopes. His ankle hurt him, but he didn’t care. He ran.