The Wondermark Gazette

Our story thus far: Eager to meet the ancient healer Grenadon, whose identity I have assumed, boat-loads of sickly and infirm tourists have descended upon the Isle of Yam-Runners. At first I was able to move among them inconspicuously, but now a whelp has identified me by the name Grenadon, and the mob has set upon me.

The inside of the swap-mall echoed fiercely with the shouts of the afflicted, each hoping their desperate yawp would reach my sympathetic ear. I turned to the urchin who’d given me up, lifting him easily by the wrists; with a single strong heave, I threw him deep into the assembled throng. “Here!” I cried. “This boy is enchanted! His flesh will heal your ailments!”

As the grasping crowd tore meat from the lad in great strips, I wheeled towards the nearest exit, only to find my path blocked by even more desperate shamblers. They were each leprous, or oozing, or ugly, or possessed of some unseen internal ailment or personality disorder. But despite their varied states of disfigurement, I knew I could count on one commonality: they would be, uniformly, physically weak. Thus, I could fight my way out.

I drew the suckers close with a cooing tone, as I might have called a recalcitrant dog, or a barn-yard idiot. When their pallid shuffling drew them within striking range, I seized a rake from a garden-supplies stall and took the face clean off the unfortunate chap at the head of the group. At this, the immediate crowd’s enthusiasm dampened somewhat; taking my opening, I moved slowly towards the exit with large steps, swinging the rake with a deliberate fierceness that was mostly bravado but a small measure genuine malice.

Once I hit the cool night air, however, all bets were off; the sicklies could move faster, now, un-hindered by the crushing closeness of apple-carts and trinket-mongeries. They came at me from all sides, with surprising speed considering their infirmities; I dropped the rake and ran full-out, pausing only to grin as I heard the tell-tale spang of someone stepping on the rake’s tines and meeting the handle with his fore-head. One after another, they spanged past the rake, and I made the best of the head start their stupidity purchased for me.

The flickering torches of the village filtered away behind trees and brush as I ran away from the village, but between my own heaving breaths I could still make out shouted pleas and viscous gouts of tuberculotic hacking. I made to lose them in the deep forest, stepping with care over protruding trip-roots and snap-happy branches, remembering the cautionary folk-tales of my childhood about travelers who’ve impersonated ancient healers being chased into a forest only to fall over a root and be torn limb from limb by gigantic warthogs.

When I reached a dark alcove I stopped, resting my stinging hands on my knees, trying to shallow my breathing, hearing the rustle and crack of sickly searchers making their dreadful way towards my last known position. Here I was safe, from the sicklies and, presumably, from warthogs, nestled in a hollow beneath a craggy oak, feeling the tickle of old leaves and the night-time ticking of bugs that, if I could see them, I would be totally freaked out by. Totally freaked out by. But in the darkness I abided their invisible repulsiveness, careful not to touch anything.

In time the sounds of pursuit began to fade, as ailment replaced adrenalin and the last straggling searchers either retired their hunt or collapsed from the grief of defeated hope. My breathing returned to its normal whistling wheeze, and I stood, gingerly.

I felt a brief pin-point of cold on my chest and placed a hand over my necklace, that shard of jade that I had stolen from the real Grenadon.

At once my eyes were flooded with green light, as the bewitched jade illuminated everything within twenty yards; I yelped and covered my eyes, nearly falling back into the bug-warren. As colour danced beneath my eye-lids, I heard a far-off cry — in moments, shouts became foot-steps became the thunderous approach of the entire phlegmy mob.

I turned and ran, but the brightness clouded my vision; I tried to cover the shard, extinguish it, tear it from my neck — all to no avail. I couldn’t fit my fingers around the thing, either because of some enchantment, or else my fingers were still greasy from some long-forgotten fried chicken. Blocking the jade’s light with my hand only filtered its rays into new and disorienting vectors. I tripped over a root, caught myself on a scratchy, probably bug-laden tree, then staggered through a still-steaming mound of animal-leavings, wheeling frantically as the heavy thumping of foot-steps approached from every direction.

I took two steps before I was met by a hot blast of stinking breath. Probably a particularly potent halitosis sufferer. Instinctively I shouted “Eat some stones! I’ve magicked them! They’ll heal your gizzard! I swear — just give it a few weeks to take effect!”

“Get on,” came a soft trill that I immediately placed as the black-haired woman from the beach. She’d found me this morning, washed ashore in a salt-barrel, and saved me from rubbing jelly-fish venom into my eyeballs. Now she sat astride a thick mass of horse-flesh, stamping the forest floor impatiently, and the approaching shouts left me no room for argument. I fumbled for the stirrups, she took hold of my collar, and after an awkward fumble or four I was nestled behind her, pressed against her back, sitting very sharply and awkwardly on the rear spur of her saddle.

“Th-thank you,” I gasped. “They’d have torn me to pieces.”

“We’re not out of the woods yet,” she said, a hint of some sly manner creeping into the edge of her voice, and she spurred the horse to action.

Within a minute we burst into a clearing filled with the wailing of the sicklies. I saw the green light of the bright-jade reflected as sharp points in their rheumy eyes as we blasted past. Their hands were too slow and shaky to catch us; their feet were too clubbed and behangnailed to keep pace. We left the lot of them behind.

Thusly the village and the forest both disappeared into the night. The woman turned the horse onto a cliff-side road, and we threaded our way carefully along a narrow path suspended between tall rock walls and a sheer drop to the crashing sea.

After a rather long and bouncy ten minutes of this, I decided it best to ask where we were headed.

“Where are we headed?” I asked.

The wind whipped her hair into my face as she tossed words over her shoulder. “I know the truth,” she said.

“The truth?” I tried my best to angle her statement away from my heart. “That I don’t know where we’re headed? That’s the truth, all right. I really have no idea.”

Her next words raced past my ears and dashed themselves on the rocks, and even the lurching warmth of her body couldn’t stave off a sudden, piercing chill in my core.

“I know that you’re not the man they taught us about in school,” she said.

NEXT: Midnight Rendez-Vous

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