A great and mighty wind suddenly roared through the cavern, and a funnel of light and a swirling storm opened in the dragon’s mouth. The creature halted in his tracks, and the fire never came. The spell had worked.
“You did it,” Sean said as he rubbed his head with both hands in an effort to smooth out the pounding headache he had gotten from the pressure that had been exerted on his head between the Queenmother’s jaws. “That’s your road home,” he added dizzily and pointed toward the glow in the dragon’s mouth.
“Say what?” Crush replied. “You expect us to believe that’s the portal home? In the mouth of the dragon?!” Crush stared at the little guy and wondered if the Queenmother had squeezed his brain too hard.
“I see it, Crush,” Pound said as he squinted his eyes to look into the center of the swirl. “There are images passing by, moving in his mouth,” he replied with a glimmer in his eye. He then turned his head toward Crush. “Didn’t you have to get into the dragon’s mouth to get the tooth? You could do that again.”
“Yeah, I did it once because I was told that the tooth was what we needed to free the slaves of the mines,” Crush declared with a dripping sarcasm. Pound and Sean’s expressions remained the same at his answer. Crush considered the implications, and he flipped the bird at Sean. “Never trust a green dwarf,” he added, and he marched over to the foot of the paralyzed dragon. Most of the stones had covered the dragon’s stiffened body again, and it was reasonably safe to climb the beast as long as the spell lasted. With his claws extended and a leap in the air, he bounded up the dragon’s legs to the heavy mid-section of its body. He then carefully climbed out along the dragon’s extended neck to its head where the vacuum from the wind was travelling with a mighty suction into the mouth. He crawled on all fours then, and he craned his head down below the upper jaw and looked into the beast’s throat. Where the serpent’s mouth and esophagus had been just moments before, there was now no uvula to be found between the jaws; there was only the swirling portal to another world. Crush had experienced traveling between worlds through portals, and he was convinced that a window had opened in the beast’s mouth, though he wished it was located in a less dangerous spot. Bravely and with little concern for his own life, he entered the gaping mouth of the stunned beast to assess the window more closely.
“Maybe it’s another time. Maybe this isn’t earth that I’m looking at,” he doubted as the images of trees, mountains, seas, and people changed every few seconds. “Where will I end up if I go through?” he asked himself quietly. He crawled back away from the mouth and stood on the dragon’s eyelids where he yelled down to the dwarf.
“Sean!! Where does this go?!!”
“To earth!!” Sean yelled back, and the pain throbbed in his aching head. There were bruised spots on either side of his head where the Queenmother had pinched him. “You have to trust me,” he said as he spoke to Pound and pointed to something new out past Beni and Captain Colere. Pound’s eyes followed in the direction of the dwarf’s hand, and he saw something there that spurred his decision making. It was Queen Dowager. She grimaced a dour frown inside the magical sphere of her own making, and she had several giant warriors alongside her. He had no dealings with her as yet, but based upon the vision he had witnessed, he doubted that she had come to help the prisoners to escape.
When he saw the look of surprise on Crush’s face, he knew that his reasoning was sound. Around him, the crowd of slaves and prisoners had swelled, and a dire urgency slid into Pound’s bones like never before. All of these people were depending on Crush and himself, but there was no way that the prisoners were going to climb the dragon’s body and escape under the watch of Queen Dowager. Some of them, if not all of them, were doomed.
“Beni!!” Crush exclaimed over the turmoil. “Can you please help lift these people?” he begged, and the giantess heard his plea for help. Using the last bit of her strength, she extended her arms outward to the sky, and the protective shell of magic emanated outward enough to block off the entire section of the mountain from her evil sister’s schemes. Beni’s energy was ebbing, and she stretched out on the ground at the foot of the dragon with the mental exertion. Luckily, the people scattered out of her way in time, and no one was injured with her collapse.
The shield would not last long, and Colere surveyed his circumstances at a glance. It was his duty to serve Queen Dowager, and he now found himself caught between loyalties. No matter the outcome, when this disaster was over, he knew that his life would be forfeit in Queen Dowager’s eyes. He had helped her sister, and she would never forgive him for doing so. Then he looked on the crowd at his feet, and he took pity on them for the state of their affairs. There would be no forgiveness for them either. If Queen Dowager had her way, the sacrifice that Beni was making would be futile once Beni passed out from exhaustion, and so the brave warrior did something that he never would have believed he could have. He defied his Queen. With two gigantic open hands, he scooped the people from the crowd into his palms, and he funneled them into the swirling vacuum at the dragon’s mouth. They stepped into the mouth of the dragon and vaporized into the nothingness beyond. One handful after another, he fed the enormous crowd into the void as Queen Dowager watched in disbelief.
“When the energy field disrupts, Rodrick, you will take the captain prisoner,” the monarch ordered from outside Beni’s magical sphere.
“What of your sister, my Queen?” he braved the question. The Queen’s eyebrows lowered, and wrinkles furrowed on her forehead.
“I will see to her,” she said with daggers in her voice. Rodrick cautiously backed away from her a step and bowed his head with her orders. The energy field was fading fast while the Captain worked to feed the last of the prisoners and slaves into the mouth of the serpent. The giant warrior reached down to pick up Pound and Sean, but Sean backed away into a corner and waved him on.
“Go on, human. The earth is no place for me. This is my home,” the dwarf explained as he held the dragon’s tooth in his hands. Satisfied with the answer, Pound nodded and climbed onto Captain Colere’s open palm. The giant raised him up to the mouth of the dragon, and he stepped up onto the dragon’s snout with Crush. Pound hesitated for a moment, and he gazed up at the giant to ask him a question.
“Aren’t you coming, too?”
The giant thought on it for a second, and he looked to Beni for an answer. She was weak, and when the magical field died, she knew that they would be at Queen Dowager’s mercy.
“What do you say, my lady? Will you go, or will you stay?” the captain inquired as he bent down to lift her in his arms. She swallowed once as she thought about it the decision with hesitation. Just then, Simon, the forgotten companion, came out from under her hair, and she could not bear to see anyone else that she cared about die that day.
“We will go,” she uttered as her eyes closed with exhaustion. The energy field that had protected them for so long evaporated into the morning air. The captain extended a free hand into the void at the dragon’s mouth, and in an instant, the two giants and the monkey were gone.
Once the protective shield was gone, the other giants wasted no time in their pursuit. Crush snatched the dragon by the nostril, and he swung down into the mouth of the beast. He was gone, and now there was only Pound and Sean. The dwarf dropped the dragon’s tooth, snapped his fingers together with a click, and disappeared to some secret cubby hole deep in the mountain, leaving Pound all alone with Queen Dowager and her guards.
Rodrick withdrew his sword and swung a wild blow at the dragon’s head, narrowly missing the field agent as he ducked his body down flush on the snout. Sparks flew from the granite, and Pound dropped into the dragon’s mouth below and disappeared into the nothingness of the portal.
Epilogue
*
Pound fell through the brilliantly lit portal as if gravity was calling to him, and he coasted like a kite through time and space.
Images of nameless people, animals, and cities passed by as he held on tightly to the child of stone that rested in the cradle of his arms, and the pictures that buzzed by his body whirled into fantasies in his vivid imagination. The flickering and twinkling and blinking of the images was maddening, and Pound fought with his own mind’s eye for control of his emotions. He closed his eyes, and he breathed a silent prayer as he meditated on what he knew was real. His mind, his body, his kilt.
Oh, the kilt. Crush would never let him live that one down without ribbing him for months on end. It suited the bagpipers in the local pipe and drums band just dandy, but he was an American field agent, and Crush would tease him forever. That was okay, he thought, because he will always be just a big pussy.
He opened his eyes, and though the imagery flashed with the same intensity, Pound was settled in his mind that those unknown worlds and times were not for him. Finally, a beautiful face which he recognized quite passionately droned by his body. It was Sherry Tatum, and Bat Jackson stepped up behind her to place his hand on her shoulder. Pound reached out to touch the image of her, yet he was too far away. The child of stone could take him there, but not today. Today, he was going home . . .
“Where am I going?” He turned his body in the direction that he was travelling, and there was only darkness ahead. Wherever he was going, he hoped it was not at the bottom of the ocean, he thought to himself as he plunged through the final thin film of this reality into the earth.
**********
When he opened his eyes, Pound blinked a few times, and there was no light. He held his breath, and he felt around in the dark for his face and hands. As far as he could tell, he was not under water, and he was still in one piece. There were also no sources of pain anywhere in his body, so he decided that he must not have been hurt from the fall.
“Hello. Is anyone there?” he asked to no one in particular and to everyone who might be listening.
“We’re all here,” a familiar voice answered. “Though I do not know where here is. Does anyone have a match?” Crush asked though his own eyes had adjusted to the dark that surrounded him, and then he remembered that no one who travelled with them was a free person and most likely would not have any handy trinkets to start a fire with on their person. “Beni? Beni? If you’re there, can you make your magic glow so that Pound can see?”
“I am here,” a soft voice answered. Strange, Pound thought to himself, that voice is not as loud as I would have expected. “I feel rested from our journey. Perhaps I can try,” she afforded, and a dim green glow resonated through the darkness to fill the empty space. By the appearance of the surroundings, Pound surmised that they were inside a cavern. People were laid out everywhere on the ground, moving in the dark, and there was a body of water next to where they lay. Crush stepped over the many people that lay between himself and Beni, and he knelt down by her side as she propped herself up on the ground by her arms. The strangest thing had happened when they had traveled between worlds; Beni and the Captain were the same size as everyone else. Crush was amazed at the unexpected change, and Beni was shocked as well by the conversion in height. She said that she felt the same, possibly even better than she had before, but it would take some time to adjust to being ordinary.
“You have all the time in the world to adjust. Perhaps we can search for a way out of this cavern in the meantime,” Crush mentioned as he got to his feet and noticed another familiar face in the dark. “Simon? How did you get here, too?” The small monkey grabbed Crush’s hand and climbed up into his arms.
“I had no other choice but to bring him with us,” Beni replied, and Crush nodded his understanding. He scratched Simon’s head as if he were a pet and then set him back on the ground. Crush then walked out to the edge of the wall and felt his way around for any openings that might lead out to daylight. Pound joined in with him, and within a couple of hours, they had discovered a passageway that led out into the midday of a hardwood forest. Crush and Pound each took turns directing groups of the freed prisoners out of the cave and into the afternoon sun, and when all of the people were out in the open forest, they had a small meeting with the Captain and Beni to discuss how to proceed.
“We are at the base of a mountain,” Pound noted. “Perhaps if we move outward in a straight line and mark our way as we go, we will find a paved road. That is assuming that we’re in the right year.”
“Or I could climb a tree and scout the surrounding area, maybe save you some time,” Crush advised. The group liked the idea, and Crush found the tallest tree that he could climb on the nearest side of the mountain. He climbed to the top like a pro, and Simon scampered up behind him. After scanning the area for any signs of civilization, he pointed in the direction that he felt they should take. They marked it on the ground with stones while he climbed down the tree, and when he had reached the bottom, they split up, leaving Simon with the rest of the freed slaves from the other dimension. Crush knew the monkey was an extraordinary creature and that he would be able to keep an eye on the people while he was away. The four of them, Crush, Pound, Beni, and Colere, marched out for a mile to the paved two-lane road that he had noticed from the treetop. Two more miles down the road, they reached a convenience store with a screen door, empty gas pumps, and a broken refrigerator.
“All we got’s cereal and dog food,” the young lady said with a smile that showed one tooth on top. She swatted a fly that landed on the counter, and she then clicked a nearby push-button pedometer that should have been used for counting steps but was clearly being used to count bugs. She raked off the remains, and Crush leaned over curiously to get the number from the pedometer display, which now read “45”. Not too shabby, but it was bad news when the flies outnumber the customers ten-to-one. The cashier took one look at Beni’s metal shoulder pads and the Captain’s leather outer garments, and exhaled a sigh through her chapped lips. “Ya’ll ain’t from around here, are ya? Goin’ to a convention or a paintball tournament?”
“Not, uh . . . no and no. Where are we?” Pound asked, and the lady looked at him with one corner of her top lip raised. The brown layer of cola and chocolate was visible on the top of her tongue.
“Whut?” she answered his question with another. “This is Randolph County. Same as it has always been. And that mountain out there, that’s Faraway Mountain. Don’t ya know?”
“Of course, we do. We’ll take a flashlight and batteries if you can spare them,” Crush broke in and reached into his empty pockets to pull out dust. Pound went to reach in his pockets for money as well, and then he remembered that he still had the kilt on. There was a tiny sporran wrapped around his waist, and all that was inside of it was a chunk of moldy cheese. With no money, it seemed that they would have to leave empty handed until Beni used her mind powers to hypnotize the lady behind the counter. There was no phone line in the old store, and they had no way of getting in touch with the DAM without one. They made the most of the temporary mind control, and they took only the immediate supplies that they needed. Crush then reached over the counter and clicked the clerk’s pedometer twenty times before he left.
“Her day’s not going so well. Might as well help her with the fly count,” he reasoned as he joined the others in the parking lot. “Pound, our old friend Hunter is the mayor of a nearby town called Franklinville,” Crush reminded him. “I’ll bet he can help us get in touch with the Doc.”
“You’re right. I had forgotten the name of the county,” Pound replied. “What’s your plan?”
“I’ll follow along the road and see if I can’t get a ride to Franklinville. It might be for the best to take the supplies back to camp and ration them out to the people. We can’t hold them back for long, but we also need help getting them acquainted with the world as it is. The Doc can get everything else arranged.” Pound, Beni, and the Captain followed the markings back through the woods to the mountain while Crush thumbed a ride into town. Four cars pass
ed him by without stopping over the next hour, and Crush started to wonder if he had made a wise choice.
“Pound might have had better luck. He doesn’t look like he’s wearing a Halloween outfit like I do,” he thought to himself as he smoothed back the hair on his cat ears. “With the kilt on, he could shine his calves for the locals, too. They’d probably like that,” he thought with a grin.
After walking for another hour, he reached a stop sign where the road ended at a junction with a four-lane highway. Several cars passed by every minute, and it was not long before a brown beater from the ‘70’s chanced to pick him up.
“Heading to Franklinville,” he told the lady driver, and she stared at his ears while he sat in the front passenger’s seat. “Costume party,” Crush said with a grin, and she shifted the car into drive and blew a puff of cigarette smoke out the window.
“I hope you’re not planning on winning any prizes,” she said with the long white cigarette bouncing up and down between her lips. The ashes were an inch long, and by the burn marks on the carpet, she did not care. “I can take you there. What’s your name?”
“Thanks, ma’am. S. S. Crush is my name, but my friends just call me Crush,” he admitted. She placed her hand coolly around the cigarette and flicked the dangling ashes out the window. Twenty minutes later, they pulled into a parking spot outside the Franklinville town offices, and Crush thanked her for the ride, though the conversation had been sparse. She saluted him with two fingers and thumped a burning filter out into the middle of the street. Then she left, and Crush realized that he had never gotten her name. He decided against ever trying to find out, and he walked into the open offices to find Mayor Hunter relaxing with a newspaper in a corner chair.
Uncanny Tales of Crush and Pound 12 Page 6
