Rem World

by Rodman Philbrick

  “It’s an earthquake!” he exclaimed.

  “Can’t be an earthquake,” Morf corrected. “We’re not on Earth, remember?”

  Just then the ground shifted under their feet, and Arthur fell to his knees. Something huge was happening to the landscape. Directly in front of them, hills were rising, as if something deep below was forcing its way up to the surface.

  Astonished, Arthur blinked dirt from his eyes as the hills lifted higher and higher, shedding trees and clumps of moss.

  And then, incredibly, the hills stood up.

  “I might have known,” Morf said, clinging to a patch of moss. For some reason he didn’t seem particularly surprised.

  Arthur stared as the hills shook themselves free of the dirt and rocks that had covered them for a thousand years. In the back of his mind he knew what was happening, but he still couldn’t believe it.

  When the dust settled, a giant stood swaying in the daylight. Bits of trees and vegetation still clung to the giant, who seemed to be in a terrible mood. Creaking like a mighty ship caught in a bad storm, the giant bent down, grasped its enormous foot, and howled in pain.

  “ARGHHHHHHHHHHHH! HURRRRRRRRRRT!”

  The cry of pain caused several small tornadoes to spin away, sucking up dirt and spewing it out like maddened vacuum cleaners. A squadron of bees had been stinging the giant’s big toe, and they flew off quickly, before the giant could smash them with her angry fists.

  Her fists. For Arthur saw that it was a female giant, with an enormous tangle of unkempt, dirt-clotted hair swinging down to her waist.

  “HURRRRRRRRRRRRT!” the giant wailed, and her cry made bolts of lightning sizzle from cloud to cloud. Tears of pain fell from her eyes and washed through the gullies like small, ferocious floods.

  The angry giant looked around for something to smash. The bees had fled to a safe distance, so her eyes alighted on two very small creatures close to hand.

  With a roar she snatched up the ground where Arthur and Morf cowered.

  “YOU HURT ME!” she bellowed, and she was about to close her mighty fist and crush them, when Arthur scrambled up on her thumb and shouted at the top of his lungs.

  “Droll!” he cried. “Stop!”

  Puzzled by the tiny voice, she hesitated. “DROLL?” She said it as if the word was unfamiliar. “WHO DROLL?”

  “You are Droll!” Arthur shouted. “You must be! You and Grog are the last of the giants!”

  “GROG? WHO GROG?”

  Her fist partially closed, as if she were losing patience.

  “Grog is the one who loves you!” Arthur cried, cupping his hands together to make his voice carry.

  “GROG? LOVE?” The giant’s voice softened a little, and the lightning stopped flashing from cloud to cloud. “CAN’T REMEMBER.”

  But the giant was curious enough to place Arthur and Morf on her shoulder, so their tiny words would be closer to her ear.

  “You’ve been sleeping for a long, long time!” Arthur cried, knowing he was shouting for his very life. “Maybe a thousand years or more! But once upon a time you loved Grog and went to pick flowers for your wedding! You never returned! Grog still misses you!”

  “GROG,” the giant muttered, causing bits of trees and branches to unravel from her tangled hair. She struggled to remember, for she hadn’t had time to fully awaken. “LOVE GROG? YES!” she thundered. “YES! YES! YES!”

  “She remembers!” Arthur cried to Morf.

  As Droll’s memory slowly returned, she recalled what had happened on that day long ago. She had gone far afield to gather flowers for her wedding celebration. Since everyone on the planet was invited, she needed a great many flowers, and her search took her farther and farther, until she came to the end of the world.

  “A DEEP, DARK PLACE,” she said mournfully, as if the memory itself was painful. “THE CRACK IN THE BOTTOM OF THE WORLD. THE LAST FLOWER WAS THERE, GROWING FAR BELOW. IT WAS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL FLOWER OF ALL, AND I REACHED DOWN TO PICK IT.”

  And that’s when the ground had split apart. The next thing she knew, she was falling. Droll fell for miles and miles, spinning and spinning. When at last she crashed into the place known as Beyond, rivers all over the world reversed direction. Tidal waves swept the planet, and the storm of Grog’s sorrow did not abate for a hundred years.

  Meanwhile, Droll slept the sleep of fallen giants. Moss grew over her, and then plants and trees, and finally a mighty forest, and still, she slept. She didn’t wake until the bees uncovered her big toe and stung it again and again.

  “The bees must have had a reason,” Arthur told her. “They wouldn’t have stung you if it wasn’t important that you wake up.”

  “WHAT REASON?” the giant asked fearfully. “IS GROG DEAD?”

  “No,” Arthur told her. “He still waits for you by the sea. But he’s given up hope that you’ll ever return.”

  “I MUST GO TO HIM.”

  “Yes, of course,” said Arthur. “But first you must help me.”

  Arthur told her about his journey and why he had to find the one called Vydel.

  “VYDEL! VYDEL IS THE ONE WHO MADE ME SEE THE FLOWER,” she said, her enormous eyes flashing with anger. “HE MADE ME FALL. HE WANTED THE LAST OF THE GIANTS TO DIE SO THAT HE COULD BE THE MOST POWERFUL OF ALL.”

  “If I don’t find him, the last of the giants really might die, and so will Vydel, and everything else that lives.”

  Droll sighed, and a cool wind brought autumn to the world.

  “I WILL TAKE YOU TO HIM,” she said.

  DROLL’S CLOTHING WAS ragged after being buried for centuries, and her pockets had long ago disintegrated. So she placed Arthur and Morf in her tangled hair, and there they rode, swinging on rope-thick strands just below her left ear.

  “Are you okay?” Arthur asked Morf, who didn’t look at all well.

  “I’ll survive.”

  Droll was striding with a purpose, leaving behind the lush gardens and forests of the Beyond. She hurried through valleys, her great feet leaving impressions that would become ponds and lakes. She clambered over steep mountains and, in her haste, she ripped away parts of the horizon. And all the while, she grumbled and complained to herself.

  “DROLL HATES THE DEMON. THE DEMON HATES DROLL. NO GOOD CAN COME OF THIS. SAY GOOD-BYE TO THE EVERYTHING.” She muttered on and on until it finally dawned on Arthur that Droll was talking to herself because she was afraid.

  If a creature as strong and powerful as a giant feared Vydel, was there any hope for a boy? And yet however much he feared facing the demon, the Nothing was infinitely worse.

  After a while they came to a great plain that stretched as far as the eye could see. The ground was so far below that Arthur couldn’t be sure, but the plain seemed to be covered with a kind of thin, yellow grass. There was nothing else—no trees, no hills, not even a rock to disturb the forever flatness of the land.

  With no obstructions to climb over or around, Droll picked up her pace, stretching out her long legs mile after mile. Slowly the thin, yellow grass of the plains gave way to bare ground, and Arthur understood that they had entered a barren area where nothing lived, not even a blade of grass.

  “What is this place?” he asked.

  “We’re in the middle of Nowhere,” said Morf. “I’ve never been here before, but I recognize it from the descriptions.”

  Droll thundered along through Nowhere, and even her massive feet made no impression on the featureless landscape.

  “MUST NOT GIVE UP,” she muttered to herself. “MUST KEEP GOING.”

  Her stride never faltered. She kept on, churning across the miles, until at last Arthur glimpsed something at the edge of the world. At first it looked like a blob of light, melting along the horizon. Then he saw that it was a reflection of something shiny, and he understood that he was seeing water again.

  After an hour or so they came to the edge, and Droll hesitated. Flat, colorless water stretched away in every direction. There were no waves, no currents, not
even a ripple to disturb the everywhere sameness. It was like a liquid version of Nowhere.

  “There’s only one place this could be,” said Morf. His voice was unusually solemn. “The Sea of the Dead.”

  Droll worked up her courage and dipped her sore, bee-stung toe in the water. She sighed deeply, creating a cloud that quickly dissipated, and then began to make her way into the Sea of the Dead. At first, it was no more than puddle-deep to Droll.

  “GIANTS CAN’T SWIM,” she announced, but it didn’t seem to matter, because the water was barely up to her ankles. Soon enough, however, the water began to deepen until Droll could no longer lift her feet free and had to slog through it, knee-deep.

  Then waist-deep.

  Then up to her armpits—Ugh! Arthur didn’t want to think about a giant’s armpits. Then higher, up to her neck, until Arthur and Morf could feel the water lapping at their own feet, just inches below.

  Meanwhile Droll gasped and burbled and kept on going. The water was up to her mouth, so she had to breathe through her nose. It sounded like a two-piston steam engine with a slow leak.

  “If the water gets any deeper, we’ll have to swim,” said Arthur, clinging to the giant’s dampening hair.

  “You can’t swim, remember?” said Morf. “Besides, nothing floats in the Sea of the Dead.”

  At the last possible moment, Droll’s hand plucked them from her hair. She held them aloft as her great head submerged beneath the dull and colorless water. Bubbles burst from her mouth and nose, creating a froth that quickly disappeared, as if there were something about the Sea of the Dead that would not tolerate a disturbance.

  Droll kept on going even though she could not breathe, for a giant’s lungs are very large. But even a giant can drown if submerged for long enough, and Arthur was just about to beg her to turn around and go back—they’d have to find another way—when he saw an island sticking up from the flat and featureless sea.

  The strange island looked like a black thorn poking through a dull plate of glass, for if the Sea of the Dead did not float, neither did it reflect. As is often the case, most of the island was actually submerged beneath the water; Droll sped to it and immediately began to scale the side of the island.

  When her head came out of the water, she drew a deep breath that dropped barometric pressures a thousand miles away.

  Then things began to happen very quickly. Before they were ready for it, Arthur and Morf found themselves deposited on the edge of the demon’s island.

  “DROLL WAITS FOR YOU,” she announced, and she lolled in the shallow waters surrounding the island, having her first real bath in ten centuries.

  “I guess we’re here,” Arthur said uncertainly.

  “Hmmmm,” said Morf. “We’re on an island in the middle of a dead sea that’s in the middle of nowhere at all. So, yeah, I guess we must be here.”

  “You needn’t be so sarcastic.”

  “Sorry, kid,” said Morf. “I sometimes get sarcastic when I’m scared to death.”

  Yet Morf, as usual, didn’t look the least bit frightened, which made Arthur feel slightly less nervous. The island was made of a dull, glassy-looking substance, and nothing grew upon it.

  “I’ll bet this whole island came out of a volcano somehow,” said Arthur. They explored just beyond the water’s edge.

  “That’s because it is a volcano,” Morf told him. “Which makes sense, because volcanoes are destructive but beautiful, and that’s how demons think of themselves.”

  The above-water part of the island was actually quite small. They found they could walk all the way around it in about ten minutes. But what the island lacked in circumference, it made up in height. The sharp, thorn-shaped peak loomed far above them, as if attempting to pierce the pale green sky.

  “Well,” said Arthur, “Vydel isn’t down here, so he must be up there.”

  “Must be, I suppose.”

  “We’ve come all this way to ask him a question,” said Arthur. “We can’t quit now.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it will be the end of Everything.”

  “So?” Morf said it ever so casually. “Everything has to end sometime, right?”

  “Maybe. But it’s not going to end right now just because I didn’t try hard enough.”

  Morf smiled. “I was testing your resolve, Arthur—lack of confidence is fatal when confronting demons—and you passed the test with flying colors. Lead on, Arthur Courage.” Morf bowed from the waist. “Lead, and I will follow. To the end of the world and the land Beyond. To the middle of Nowhere and the Sea of the Dead. To the Island of the Demon, and the demon himself—lead on!”

  IT TOOK ALL OF Arthur’s strength to make the climb. The sides of the peak were smooth and slippery, and he had to cling with his hands and his feet, inching himself upward.

  Maddeningly, Morf seemed to keep up without having to exert himself.

  “Only a demon would live in a stupid place like this,” Arthur said, grunting with effort.

  “I’m sure you’re right.”

  At last they came to a narrow ledge, although it was nearly as slippery as the sloping sides of the peak. Arthur heaved himself over the edge and sat there panting as he caught his breath. Morf, naturally, looked as rested as if he’d been lounging in a chair at the beach.

  “There’d be a nice view from here,” he commented, “if only there was something to see.”

  “Where’s that crummy demon?” asked Arthur, for he was very frustrated. “I’ll bet he’s hiding just to make it difficult for us.”

  “No doubt,” said Morf. “Unless he lives in that box.”

  “Box?” said Arthur. “What box?”

  On the inside corner of the ledge was a box made of some sort of black metal. Or maybe it was carved from colorless stone—it was hard to tell. The box, which was about the size of a small television set, had been built into the slope of the upper peak. Instead of a screen, the box had a solid-looking door, and the door was fastened shut with a big, ancient padlock.

  Affixed to the lock was a small paper tag.

  THERE IS NO KEY, it said on the paper tag. FIND A WAY TO OPEN ME OR DIE TRYING.

  The note was signed, VYDEL.

  “Of all the rotten luck,” Arthur fumed. “We came all this way, and now there’s no way to open the lock!”

  Arthur sat down, completely discouraged. But he leaped up right away because the surface of the ledge was hot. Hot and getting hotter.

  Morf was already dancing around on his little feet. “You’d better hurry!” he cried. “In about three minutes we’ll be frying like eggs!”

  It was obvious that if they didn’t find a way to open the padlock, they would indeed die trying, as the note had promised. Arthur’s shoes began to steam, and his feet were hotter than they’d ever been, hotter even than the day he’d made the mistake of trying to cross the beach without his sandals. Much hotter.

  “It’s no use!” he cried. “We can’t get back down the way we came, because everything is burning!”

  Morf’s little feet were sizzling like sausages in a pan, but instead of complaining, he said, “You must have an idea! You must!”

  But Arthur’s only idea was that his friend should escape while he still had the chance. “Change, Morf! Change!”

  Arthur expected Morf to change into a bird and fly away. Instead, he was astonished to see the little creature morph himself into a long, slender garden snake. Before Arthur had a chance to be afraid—and he was terribly frightened of snakes of all kinds—Morf slithered across the hottest part of the ledge, heading right for the box.

  When he got to the box, the Morf-snake slipped into the keyhole in the ancient padlock. He writhed and squirmed and pushed, and a moment later the hasp popped free, and the lock opened.

  Instantly the ledge was cool again.

  “An excellent idea you had,” Morf said when he was himself again.

  Arthur was about to protest that it wasn’t his idea, not really, when slow
ly the door to the box opened wide.

  “Who opened me?” said a small, reedy voice.

  The box appeared to be empty, but clearly it was not. At least not in the usual sense of the word.

  “WHO OPENED ME?” it demanded, louder this time.

  “Us,” Arthur confessed. “Or rather, me.”

  “Which is it?” said the voice in a nasty tone.

  Arthur didn’t want to get Morf in trouble, and, anyhow, it was his journey, so he said, “It was me.”

  “There are billions of me’s,” said the voice inside the box. “Which me are you, specifically?”

  “I’m Arthur,” said Arthur, and he started to add “Woodbury,” until he thought better of it. “Arthur, um, Arthur Courage.”

  “Hmpf!” said the voice. “A preposterous name for a fat little boy. Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” said Arthur. “I’m sure.”

  “You are allowed one question,” said the box. “If it’s the right question, you get an answer. If it’s the wrong question, you die.”

  · · ·

  And so, at last, the time had come.

  Arthur took a deep breath. He tried to steady his quaking knees. He said, “My question is this: How do I get home?”

  The box was silent for a moment. And then it began to laugh. It was not a friendly kind of laugh, either. It was a laugh of triumphant cruelty. “What a stupid question! And obviously the wrong question, too. Why should I tell you, a mere boy, how to get home?”

  Suddenly the ledge was hot again, much hotter than before.

  “Because if you don’t tell me, you die, too!” said Arthur, dancing from foot to foot as his shoes smoldered.

  “Ridiculous!” roared the empty box. “Nothing can kill me!”

  “Exactly!” Arthur shouted. “The Nothing can kill you! And if I don’t find my way home and stop the Nothing, Everything will cease to exist, and that includes you!”

  Just as suddenly as it had heated up, the ledge under his smoldering feet cooled down. Not all the way, but enough so his shoes weren’t burning.

  “Explain,” said the box. “And this better be good or I’ll turn you into a bacon crisp and fry your soul for dessert.”