Mal
“Hey, Mum! I’m home” Mal calls as he pushes through the door into the cottage he shares with his mum.
“Back already, Mal?” His mum comes out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a tea towel that is more worn and thin than she herself is, and looks around him to peer out the open door. “I don’t see the cow. Did you sell her or stash her in the shed?”
“Sold her,” Mal says.
His mum perks up at that. “How much did you get for her?”
“Three.”
“Three gold?”
“Ah… no…”
All the way back home Mal has been thinking of how best to sell the Amazing Deal he received from the guy on the road and he still hasn’t really hit on one that he thinks will fly with his mum. She can be a bit of a hard woman and she had sent him out with their last real asset, the milky-white cow that had earned three – count them, three – medallions at the local fair, in hopes of making enough to get them by for a few moons until the mine reopened and she can go back to cooking for the miners.
And he had, technically… technically, not gotten a fair exchange for the cow. He’d gotten a Deal! He just, still, isn’t sure how to make her see that. Best to just take the bull by the horns, metaphorically speaking, he guesses.
He holds out his hand, displaying three white pills.
“Three Magic…” he draws out the aaaah in the word, kind of like the guy on the road had. It had impressed Mal enough, he was hoping it would work its… ahem… magic on his mum too. “Beans.”
So, yeah, if her eyes widening and her mouth going all pinchy was anything, the wonder of the deal isn’t hitting her quite like it had Mal. Then she lets out a screech – an actual screech! – and his idea was pretty much confirmed.
“Drugs, Mal? Drugs!”
She comes flying across the space separating them, her hand raised, and Mal isn’t sure if that smack is going to send the pills flying from his hand or his brain from his head but he isn’t taking any chances. Before she can close the distance he does a quick flippity-flip with his hand, raises it to his mouth, and swallows.
Being they are Magic Beans the mouthful slides right down, no water needed. And then the world is going all wibbly-wobbly and there’s colors pulsing all around him and Mal is sliding down, down to the ground as the magic takes hold of him. So absolute is its effect that he barely even feels his mum’s hand connecting with the back of his head or the impact of his cheek against the rough stone of the floor as his eyes roll back and he goes completely limp.
Bird song plays in Mal’s ears. He reaches for his pillow to pull it over his head but its not there. Oh, yeah, right, he’s probably still on the floor. Grumbling a bit, he slowly opens his eyes. Yep, floor all right. And a bit of an ouch with that too.
Pressing his palms to the floor he pushes up to a sit before opening his eyes. Always better to be staring at a wall than the ceiling, he figures. Once he’s in a sort of upright position he slowly opens his eyes and looks around the room, half afeared his mum will be about with a spoon for the side of his head.
Nope, no Mum. Just the wooden bench with threadbare pillows on it pulled up before the fire and Mum’s rocker he’d taken five moons to carve out for her next to it with her knitting sitting as it usually does in the seat. The fire is banked, the room is silent. A beam of light spears through the window and slants across his face, white and clear and thin like sunlight will get after a storm where the world is all full of clean and promise. He raises a hand to shield eyes that burn and sting but it isn’t enough so he blinks and blinks again then pushes back on his butt so his face is out of the light.
Pricking his ears he strains to place his Mum. Is she in the kitchen? No bustle there. The sleep loft. Uh, no. Hmm…
Slowly, he pushes up to his feet. His head swims a bit and the walls seem to pulse for a moment. Damn, but that was some good stuff. Magic…? Eh, maybe? But, good? Oh, yes. Once he’s all the way up to his full height he slowly turns his head and the room spins. Or his vision spins. Or… whatever… something spins and he’s swaying on his feet and closing his eyes to better orient.
Yep, good stuff. He starts to chuckle, thinks better of it. Don’t need to give Mum more to get her Mad On. Once the spinning stops and the flutters settle in his stomach he very slowly opens one eye and shifts his gaze around. When nothing else spins he opens the other eye. Still good.
Heh. Slowly, quietly, he walks through the odd after-storm light towards the kitchen. No Mum. He goes up the ladder to the sleeping loft. No Mum.
So… Back down the ladder and to the front door and then through the front door and into…
The… f… uh, heck?
Mal looks around at the empty landscape. Like as in EMPTY. No trees. No yard. No rickety shed where the cow used to be housed. And… uh… he looks down at knees that are wreathed in… fog…? He lifts a foot, puts it down, then lifts it just a little tiny bit when it seems to sink into something spongy and not quite right. Ducking down, he pushes his head into the, yep, fog and looks at his foot where it is sinking into… a cloud?
A f… freaking cloud?
He falls back, lands on his butt hard. Well, that’s going to… not leave a bruise? Seems like butt planting into a cloud leads to said cloud giving way beneath you. Bounce, bounce, bounce goes his butt as he tests the surface.
Okay… so… he purses his lips, looks around. Let’s go with he’s still on a serious Trip from that Bean. Yep, that’s what this Had to Be because otherwise… the f… heck, man?!
Going with that and deciding – hey, spirit of adventure!, he sets out across the cloudy landscape. Fog swirls around his knees and up his thighs as he goes and his feet seem to bounce slightly up off the spongy surface of cloud, making him feel like he is bounding across the landscape. At first he doesn’t really set out in any one direction – them all being pretty much the same: white, white, white and foggy. Then, somehow, as so often was the way of dreams, he just knows he wants to go Sou… uh, to his right. Which feels like South.
Dreams, man.
He’s walked, oh, he doesn’t know, a while when on the far horizon he sees turrets rising from the fog. Like actual turrets. From an actual castle or fortress or something. Whoa. This is so far outside of his real life. He’s never seen a castle or a fortress or a… whatever. How is his mind making this stuff? He has no basis for it but those are for sure turrets; a fact he confirms as he bounce/walks towards them and they grow larger on the horizon.
The bouncing stride he maintains makes short work of the distance between him and the… yep… definitely a castle, he determines as he closes up on it. It was gigantic. Like, the stone wall around it had to be four times Mal’s height. Maybe five times. He doesn’t know. A lot of times. He has to crane his neck and squint to see the top of it, wreathed in the, by now, ubiquitous fog-clouds.
There is no break in the wall where he can see, so he starts to walk along it, trailing his hand along the rough stone to keep his place and also to verify it remains solid. What he doesn’t need is for it, or the (gods forbid!) clouds under his feet, to suddenly go ‘poof!’. Sure, he might be borrowing trouble but… dreams, man. It seems to him a sensible precaution to keep himself as firmly physically connected to the landscape as he can, just to make sure it stays “real” or, at least, real to him.
Eventually, he feels a break in the stone beneath his hand and then his fingers are brushing up against wood. Pushing his face forward he confirms it is wood, though weird wood in that its more grey than brown which makes him realize everything here has been monochromatic: all white and grey and grey-brown and that seems kind of sad. Shouldn’t a dream be exploding with color? Gyp.
From where he stands, so close to the wall, he can’t see where the wood ends when he tips his head back so he takes a step back, then two, so he can finally tell that he’s standing in front of a door. Well, a door if a door was about fifteen feet tall and five feet wide. He looks up to the appropriate place a doorknob would be on a door that size and he sees an iron latch. It’s up high, above his head by a little bit, but the spongy surface of the cloud vaults him upwards when he pushes off of it and he’s able to reach the latch. He dangles there a moment, wondering how he’s supposed to lift the thing.
Dang, he should have maybe thought this out a little more. He lets go and drops back down, falling to his knees for the height was such that it was a challenge to remain on his feet when he dropped. The cloud/ground cushioned him well enough, giving way beneath his palms. It was that position, hands and knees and head down, that lets him notice that the gap beneath the giant door happens to be just the right size for a slight guy such as himself to shimmy under.
Perfect.
Tipping his head sideways, with his cheek cushioned by cloud, he pokes his head under the door and looks around. Before him is an empty courtyard. The walls are covered in climbing ivy, the floor is paved with flagstones. A table, he squints to confirm, yes a table that seems terribly large is situated a distance away. There doesn’t seem to be anyone about.
Normally Mal would be a more polite boy… Okay, he snorts a bit at that, but he’d be a More Polite boy even if he wouldn’t be the Most Polite boy. Anyhow, he would be polite and not go poking about in what is probably someone else’s home – because he knows he wouldn’t like it much if someone went mucking about in his cottage – but this was a dream and rules need not apply, he supposes, so he scoots under the door then surges forward across the flagstone floor towards the table.
His tummy rumbles. He presses a hand to it with a frown. Leave it to him to have a dream in which he’s hungry. He feels like he’s always hungry recently. Mum says it’s a growth spurt. He supposes that it’s such a constant for him he just carried it with him into the dream but still… disappointing. Unless… maybe he’ll find Dream Food and it will be the Best Food in the World and he will finally feel full. Ah, wouldn’t that be a dream indeed?
It doesn’t take long and he’s up against the table and he’s leaning back, way back, to see the tabletop. The leg, which he’s standing against, goes up about two, maybe three, feet above his head. Trippy. Or… dreamy.
He needs to stop goggling at the weird and just accept it because otherwise all he’ll be doing is goggling and where’s the fun in that?
He jumps up. He doesn’t have the advantage of cloud footing any longer so it takes about three leaps before his fingers curve around the thick edge of the gigantic table and then he’s pulling himself up so he can see the surface. His tummy gives a big old bear growl of a rumble when his gaze lights upon the feast laid out on the table. Yum, yum, yum.
His feet are dangling and swinging and threatening to make him fall. He plants his elbows on the table surface and tightens his belly so he can pull himself up to sit on the edge of the table. A fruit bowl is the closest thing to him. In contrast to the gray and whites of the world, the fruits in the bowl are the richest colors Mal has ever seen. Red. Yellow. Purple and green. Against the monochrome of grey stone wall, grey-brown wood table, and dark grey metal of the bowl they are in, they pulse like a vibrant beacon of color and life. So bright, so loud, so captivating. They are practically screaming at him “eat me, eat me!”
He cocks his head, half expecting to hear them say exactly that because… dream fruit, but nope. Kind of glad for that – he wasn’t sure he could eat Talking Dream Fruit. That seemed kind of cruel.
There are apples that are, literally, as big as his head. Pears; also on that scale. A grapefruit he could use as a football. He contemplates the selection, searching for something that isn’t going to require him to bury his entire head in it, and settles on a grape that’s only about as big as his palm.
He’s reaching for it when he hears the sound of footsteps. His gaze darts towards the sound and he pinpoints a door in the wall of the main building, the space separating it from him about the same as he traveled to get to the table. The footsteps stop and the door starts to open.
Abandoning his grape, with an internal lament of “but, dream food!”, Mal slides off the side of the table. He hangs by his arms, his legs swinging for a moment, then quietly drops to the stone floor. A minute more and he’s tucking himself into the shadow next to the leg of the table and not a moment too soon.
The door swings open. No one walks through it at first. Instead there’s the sound of sniffing, if sniffing sounds strong enough to suck a small cat into the nose doing the sniffing. Seriously. Whoosh. Mal kind of thinks he feels the room drawing in and towards the sniffer, like they are able to pull all the air from the room and into their lungs. Powerful stuff, that.
Mal clings to the leg of the table, just in case there actually is some kind of vacuum effect going on. He does not need to be dragged into nostrils that could make that noise. Can you imagine the boogers? Ugh!
After the sniffing the door pushes open more and a… guy? A guy, if a guy was, oh Mal doesn’t know, seventy-nine hundred feet tall and half as wide. Okay, slight exaggeration. But… slight. A guy who is abnormally tall and abnormally wide walks into the room. Well, maybe not abnormally. Maybe, you know, the right size for a table that stands seven feet from the ground. Anyhow, back on point. The guy is muttering something and Mal strains to hear it.
“Fee Fi Fo Fum…”
Really, Mal thinks, did I hear that right? Who says Fee Fi Fo Fum? Some cra… cruddy bard that’s looking for a rhyme? Oops, there’s more.
“I smell the blood of a gentlemun.”
Okay, yep, definitely going for a rhyme.
“Be he alive or be he dead I’ll grind his bones to make me bread.”
Okay, rhyming and capital-C-Creepy. Suppressing a shudder, Mal tucks himself deeper into the shadows because he so doesn’t need to have his bones ground, for bread or not.
Scanning his gaze up the table leg he sees that there is a support that goes from it to the bottom of the table top at an angle. There is a space between it and the tabletop that seems a goodly size for him to tuck himself into. Being as quiet and careful as he can, he runs his hand up the leg until he can wrap his fingers around the top of the brace. From there he links the fingers of his other hand with those and very carefully swings his legs up and away from the table leg.
It takes two swings, and he’s holding his breath and straining for any sound he might make, then he has one leg up on the brace. It takes another second to get his other leg up. He clings to the brace like a monkey for a moment and listens to the sound of his blood pounding in his ears. After a minute his heart stops galloping in his chest and his breath evens out. The footsteps start up again, moving towards the table. Mal isn’t sure he’ll have time to get himself up on the arm before the Giant – yes, he’s settling on Giant and anyone with an issue with that could fight him. Later. Not now. Much later, after there’s no Giant about – gets to the table but he’s set on trying.
Carefully, carefully, he scoots around and gets his belly over the bar of the brace and then he hauls himself up on the arm. Once secure he tucks himself up hard against the leg, with his legs braced against the arm to keep himself firm on the beam. He watches big feet and big legs approach with big shuffling steps. A chair is pulled out from the far side of the table and Mal is very glad he decided to haul his butt off the floor as gigantic legs with bent knees come poking under the table perilously close to where he’d been standing.
There’s more snuffling then he hears, “Still smells like gentlemun.”
The chair pushes out and then suddenly there’s a head under the table. A, not to put too fine a point on it, gigantic head with one gigantic eye visible to Mal which searches the shadows under the table. Mal shrinks back, willing himself to become one with the leg of the table and the shadow he’s stashed in. It seems to work as the gigantic mouth blows out a billowing breath then the head withdraws.
There’s a thump and then the sound of coins spilling onto the table. A Lot of coins. Mal’s palms start itching and maybe he gets a little tear in his eye. Whatever. Money is something he never has enough of and that sounds like a whole lot of money up there.
A voice calls out from beyond the open door. The giant hollers, “What?” There’s a second then he adds in a grudging tone, “Dear?”
There’s some more muffle, muffle, muffle then the giant mutters, “Fine” and he’s pushing away from the table and leaving the chair out as he lumbers towards the sound of the voice.
For a second, maybe a second and a half, Mal sits there in the shadow and he’s thinking “all that money, right there on the table above me.” Gah, its practically calling His Name!
He strains his ear. Is that…? Why, yes, he’s pretty sure all that Lovely Dream Money IS calling his name.
“What?” he whispers, “Dream Money? Do you want me to take you? Do you want me to rescue you from that horrible giant?”
Again with the straining and now he’s Really Sure that he’s getting an answer and that answer is “Take Me! Take Me Before My Master Returns!”
Who is he to deny a lady? Or money? Plus… dream. Where’s the harm then in being adventurous?
That firm in his mind Mal loops his arms around the brace and swings his legs, catching the edge of the giant’s chair with the ball of his foot. Shimmying his arm up the beam he manages to get his other foot on the chair and then he’s pushing off hard with his arms and he’s sliding into the giant seat. He lies there a moment on his back, listening for any sound from the space behind the open door. Nope, nothing.
That settled he pushes to a sit then stands on the chair. From there it’s a hop and a half and he’s up on the table. For a moment his brain just boggles at the coins scattered across the surface. They are varying sizes but none is smaller than a dinner plate. And they are all gold. Gold!
Mal’s contemplating how he’s supposed to carry them – shove them in his pants? Like they’d fit! Down the back of his shirt – maybe he can tuck it in tight under his belt? – when his gaze lights on a sack beside the pile. Probably the sack the giant was carrying them in. And wasn’t that a lucky break for Mal?
Quick as a cat on a bug, he pounces on the bag and shoves a coin into it, judging the weight of the thing as he does so. He figures he can maybe carry three, possibly four, more coins before the sack gets too heavy for him to handle. Sure, it won’t be all the coins but first he knows he can carry that many and he might fail if he gets greedy for more and second five coins, especially the size of platters, are still more than he’s ever had in his life.
Ear still pricked for any sound, both from beyond the door and from himself, he slips the coins into the sack and hauls it over his shoulder – ugh, its heavy! That settled he hops as quietly as he can down on to the chair’s seat. He’s about to hop to the ground when there’s a sound in the direction the giant exited. Jerking towards the noise causes the heavy bag to curve through the air and Mal finds himself swinging with it.
Physics – guess it works in dreams too – is against him, dragging him around in an arc that follows the swing of gold and sends him toppling backwards towards the edge of the chair. For a moment he teeters there, eyes wide and his heart galloping like a rabbit chased by a dog, and then he is freefalling. The gold hits the floor with a clunk first but only a second before the back of his head does.
Pain flows from the spot, a black wave, over the back of his head, his hairline, down his forehead and then over his eyes where it blinds him. The last thing he sees is an expanse of black suffused by a swirl and spark of popping colors, like a million lightning bugs in a night sky, and then he knows no more.
Bird song plays in Mal’s ears. He reaches for his pillow to pull it over his head but it’s not there. Oh, yeah, right, he’s probably still on the floor.
The floor!
He jerks up and his gaze darts around for a moment before he realizes he is not seeing a grey world of dark wood and stone and a flagstone floor, but the familiar view of his mum’s cozy cottage with its bench and rocker before the fire. His shoulders slump as he takes a deep breath and he falls back to lie on the floor a moment more. What a weird…
He shifts and the side of his skull thumps into something lumpy and awkward. He rears back, catches the subtle gleam of gold, and then he’s springing to his feet.
The f… uh… heck! The heckity-heck-heck!
“Mal!” At his abrupt ascent, Mal’s mum rises from her rocking chair and rushes over to him. “Honey! Oh, thank the gods.” She closes her eyes for a moment, clutching the medallion she wears on a ribbon around her neck and swaying on her feet. “I’m so sorry. I just got so mad. I should never have hit you! It’s just…” she sighs something hard, “you make me so mad sometimes. But, that doesn’t mean I should be hitting you. That’s wrong.”
Uh… Okay… Does she not see the bag? Mal slants a glance towards the ground and sees one of his mum’s crocheted quilts folded up like a pillow where he’d been lying. Tentatively he pokes the quilt with his toe and he hits something solid. Something that might just be five gold coins the size of dinner plates.
“So…” he ventures to his mum, “I’ve been lying here all this time?”
His mum gives him ‘a look’, “Where else would you be lying?”
Mal’s quick with the response. “Nowhere. I guess. Just asking.”
Surreptitiously he slips his hand into his trouser pocket. His fingers brush the two pills he’d slipped in there before swallowing the third one when his mum came charging up at him. And he smiles…
Enter The Woods 