Here's chapter five! I've got to be honest, I'm not loving it as much as the first four, but I was a day and a half past my deadline as it was and sometimes you've just got to hook a chain around her middle and drag her down, if you know what I'm saying. Ah, well, I'll iron it out in syndication.
Feedback is like a kindergarten teacher who gives you one of her kidneys when you need a transplant: nice. Thanks very much to everyone who commented on chapter four!
And now: onward!
The March-Stepper
Chapter Five
Once upon a time there was a motley trio of hard-luck pirates whose names were Mermaid, Moustache, and Feather. They had fallen a long way from the lofty plateau where they had started off as the notorious Pirates of the Floating Island, mostly on account of the Floating Island in question had developed an unexpected but extremely troublesome tendency to sink to the bottom of the ocean in the wee hours of the morning, taking most of the crew and all of the loot with it. Well, I say 'tendency', but in truth it only happened the once.
The fortunes of these pirates improved somewhat when they chanced upon a Blue Salamander and a girl with no name- or, rather, a Blue Salamander and a girl with no name chanced upon them in the leafy forests of Dyfed. The girl then proceeded to make them an unbelievable offer.
"Would you like to come along?" she said. "We're going to see the Vicar. Maybe he knows where you can find another island."
Mermaid and Moustache and Feather exchanged startled looks. "That be right generous of you, miss," Mermaid explained, "but I think we're out of th' floatin' island business for the time being. Ain't any profit in it if they're going to go sinkin' on us all the time, is there? Thanks all the same."
"Probably for the bessst," hissed the Salamander. "The Wild Hart walksss tonight. You'll be sssafer here."
Feather bristled. "We ain't afraid of no Wild Hart," he announced in a high blustering sort of voice. "I'd hate to meet the Hart could shudder us, ain't that right, boys?"
"You know it, Feather," said Mermaid. "Aye," said Moustache.
"Oh, come on then," said the girl, "aren't you even the tiniest bit afraid of him? Everyone else I meet seems to be."
"No! Never! Not even the tiniest bit!" insisted Feather.
"That's God's truth, right there," said Mermaid. "Aye," said Moustache.
"Nonsssenssse," said the Salamander. "Everybody fearsss the Wild Hart."
"We don't," said Mermaid, bravely. "Feather's right. Ain't no Hart in England that could scare the likes of us. We're bleedin' pirates, by thunder! Terrors of the seas, am I right? The Pirates of the Floatin' Island, that's what we are! Huh! Ain't that right?"
"Full well it is," said Feather, jumping excitedly to his feet. "We'll make nice venison sausages of the blighter! We'll polish his antlers for him!"
"Aye," said Moustache, thumping the ground with his glittering fist.
"So you'll go with us, then?" asked the girl, excitedly. "Oh, please say you will."
There was an awkward silence. The pirates exchanged horrified glances.
"Why… yes," said Feather, slowly. "'cos… 'cos… 'cos mayhap you'll need someone t' protect you… from th'… from-"
"-from the Wild Hart," said Mermaid, "the one we ain't a'scairt of."
"Aye," said Moustache, looking none too thrilled about it.
"Sssplendid," said the Salamander, smugly.
They quickly tore down their campground and put out the fire. The teapot and tin cups were stacked neatly on a nicked wooden tray and stashed in the back of the painted wagon which, after a moment, Moustache grudgingly took the poles of and wheeled off towards the Vicar's house. Mermaid and Feather and the girl trudged off behind him with the Salamander twining around their ankles.
"So," said Mermaid, "who's this Vicar, then? I haven't heard his name afore."
"Never heard of the Vicar?" asked the girl. "Oh, he's frightfully smart, the vicar. He's built himself all kinds of wonderful things."
"Like that clockwork ssservant," hissed the Salamander, "do you remember? or the magic bootsss he made for Theodric."
Mermaid scowled and bent down to adjust his peg leg. "Been out to sea a long time," he muttered, "man misses things when he's out to sea. Ruddy Vicar."
"You haven't even heard the story of his Incredible Going-Up-In-The-Air machine?" said the girl, a little horrified. "You must've heard that, at least."
"Tell it," invited Feather. "It'll pass th' time well enough."
"Once upon a time," began the girl, but the Salamander interrupted, his scales flashing ultramarine in indignation.
"You alwaysss get to tell the ssstories," he hissed angrily. "I know thisss one!"
"Well, go on then," said the girl, a little irately. "Tell."
"Thank you," said the Salamander with crushing dignity, "I will."
He cleared his throat and said:
"Once upon a time there wasss a Vicar who lived in Dyfed, and he wasss wondrousss sssmart. He built himssself many wonderful thingsss, and built many wonderful thingsss for the goodfolk of Dyfed to eassse their livesss, for that was the sssort of man the Vicar wasss."
"But he wasss often dissstracted from his dutiesss, for the Vicar wasss a man who thought deeply about all sssortsss of thingsss. The thing he thought about the mossst wasss the nature and location of Paradissse, what you Chrissstiansss call Heaven, for he had a burning curiousssity, you sssee, about what lay beyond the ssspan of mortal yearsss."
"He determined that the mossst likely location for the Heaven he sssought wasss in the sssky, for the sssky is, asss we know, the home of God and hisss angelsss. The Vicar thought and thought and thought sssome more about it and in the end he decided to build, with his own two handsss, a machine that would take him up to Heaven. It would be an amazing Going-Up-In-The-Air Machine."
"So he tinkered and he puttered and he pottered and he fiddled for a year and a day, and tore it down and built it back up again sssix or ssseven times, before finally he had gotten it the way he wanted it. Everyone in Dyfed gathered the next morning to sssee the Vicar off on his expedition to Heaven. But no sssooner had he sssat down in hisss amazing going-up-in-the-air machine than he gave a cry of dessspair."
"Why?" asked Feather, rapt with attention.
"Husssh!" insisted the Salamander. "The Vicar had meant for hisss contraption to be powered by sssteam, you sssee. Only he had forgotten one thing, for there wasss not a flame in all of England hot enough to boil asss much water asss hisss assscent would require."
"Then what happened?" growled Mermaid.
"Can't go around asking people to tell you about things they don't know about, boy," snapped the girl, doing a hoarse, passable impression of the Troll. "That's in the rules, that is."
"T-t-troll!" squeaked Feather, and leapt into Mermaid's arms. "God rot you, Feather!" roared Mermaid, as he fell over for the second time that day and landed quite hard on his behind in the crackling brown leaves.
"No, no," replied the girl, hastily. "I'm sorry, Feather, it's just me. It's only that that's what my Troll used to tell me when I asked how a story ended. I don't know what happened next."
"Oh, that's all right, then," said Feather, and laughed uneasily, for to his ears it had been a very good impression indeed.
"What do you want this Vicar for, anyways?" asked Mermaid, after he had flailed about on the ground for a bit and gotten up and dusted himself off and given Feather a kick and lost balance and fallen down and gotten up again.
"Oh," said the girl, dismissively, "I'm looking for Love. I don't suppose you know where I could find it?"
All the pirates leered as one, and I'll tell you why when you're older.
Once upon a time there was a Troll who was very unhappy indeed, partly because he had been unlucky in love but principally because he had a sneaking suspicion that the goat had lied to him- and he had seemed like such an honest and forbearing creature!
But he had followed the fellow's directions to the letter only to find himself exactly where he started, smack in the middle of his very own bridge with not so much as an inkling of where to go next. He spent a few bitter moments imagining what he was going to do with that Goat when he caught up with him before he remembered that he had gobbled him up not an hour before and that made him feel a little better, not to mention a little fuller.
All the same, one Troll could only take so much, and the Troll sat heavily down on the cobbles to have a good sulk.
"Ain't fair," he muttered to himself. "Did my best, didn't I? Showed willing and all that. It's a bloody scandal is what it is. Huh, stinkin goats and their stinking advice. Oughtta have just stayed home. Wasted a whole stinkin day onna wild goat chase. Girl's probably married off to some bloody farmer by now, and I wish him joy of her. Wot was I supposed to have done, then? Bloody stupid Troll."
But by and by his voice tapered off into a low, miserable snuffling. That was when he heard the sound of slender hooves trip-trapping over his bridge and looked up, wiping his great hooked nose with the back of his gnarled green hand.
"Who's there?" he demanded, tearfully. "I'm warnin you, I'm in no sort of mood!"
"I'm sorry to disturb you," came the answer in a deep sort of gravelly voice. The Troll squinted as the trip-trapper and bridge-crosser came into view.
"Oho," he growled, "another goat, is it? Come to give me advice, have you, goat? Come to tell me which way to go next? Cor, you've got a lot of nerve, haven't you, comin here like this. I oughtta tear you limb from limb."
"I wish to blazes you would call me by my name," said the goat, a shade indignant.
"Wot's your name, then?" bellowed the Troll. "Tell me, so I can eat you up!"
"My name," said the goat, "is Gruff."
"Is it?" demanded the Troll. "You're the biggest goat I've ever clapped eyes on, Gruff, and that's no lie. What'd you eat to make you get so big?"
"Dandelions and crab-grass," said Gruff, "and oats, where I could get them."
The Troll squinted harder. "And you're the brawniest goat I ever did see," he said, "and that's no lie, either. What have you done to make you get so strong?"
"Fought wolves in the winter and mad dogs in the fall," said Gruff, "and ran from the Wild Hart when we crossed paths, I'm not ashamed to admit."
The Troll's eyes were wet black slits in his leathery green face from squinting. "And your horns," he said, "your horns look harder and curlier and generally more fearsome than any goat I've yet made the acquaintance of, and if that's a lie may I have the Hart for a husband. What is it makes them so braw?"
"Mother's milk and many a tumble," said Gruff, "and a little magic, between you and me, for a little goes a long way where magic is concerned."
"That's so," said the Troll. "You're far from average where goats is concerned, ain't you, Gruff?"
"I get by," said Gruff. "You haven't seen my brothers, have you?"
The Troll scratched his head with five mossy green fingers at once. "Don't suppose you can tell me what they look like?"
"I could," said Gruff, pawing at the cobbles with one hoof, "but I think you already know, for I can hear hooves trip-trapping in your belly and smell goat's blood on your breath."
"Aye," admitted the Troll, "I believe that you can, at that, for I ate your littlest brother on this very bridge and your middle brother not an hour past a league east of here. Would it help at all if I was to say I was sorry?"
"Not a bit," said Gruff.
"Nah," said the Troll, "didn't think so, really, but you can't blame me for tryin, can you?" He flapped his ears miserably. "So, I suppose the only thing to do now is fight, innit?"
Gruff dipped his head. "That was what I had in mind. Unless you had a better suggestion?"
"I got nothin," said the Troll. "I ain't exactly what you'd call one of nature's great thinkers."
"Well, then," said the goat, and charged. The Troll hunkered down and grabbed him by the great curved horns and tossed him up twenty feet in the air and unhinged his jaw to catch him in his big red wet mouth but got the trajectory all wrong and Gruff kicked him in the neck on the way down and sprawled in a heap as the Troll's hands shot to his throat and got up and butted him in the ankle so his leg gave way and he fell to the ground but he fell on top of Gruff and Gruff only barely squeezed his way out and the Troll got up and kicked Gruff as hard as he could and Gruff went flying but landed on his feet and pawed the ground and lowered his head and came barreling down the bridge at the troll who bent down to get him by the horns again but he twisted his neck and slipped past the great big grasping hands and butted the Troll as hard as he possibly could right in the chest and the Troll took three steps back quite fast and tripped over the side of the bridge and fell fifty feet through the air flailing his arms because he had quite forgotten that he hadn't any wings and would have been too heavy for them to do much good even if he had and smashed into the river, far below.
Gruff stuck out his neck cautiously and peered down into the cavernous gorge. When he was satisfied that nothing was stirring in the muddy brown water, he went trip-trapping on down the bridge to find his aged mother and sing her sad goat-songs for the deaths of her youngest sons.
Far below, the Troll groaned weakly and let his poor aching head rest in the muddy pillow of the riverbed.