In Which I Sort Of Destroy A Town But Not Really

“I told you!” cried Selladore as we stood watching my beloved pig sinking into the watery abyss.

We’d made it several miles, winding through the ranks of gnarled frozen fingers, when Margaret had misplaced her trotter and plunged through the ice. The hole around her grew, and within seconds she was in the middle of a large watery ring. She didn’t do a very good job of treading water. Through the ice, we watched the vague pink shape of my steed sink away from us.

“Shit! Margaret!” I lamented, reaching down into the water to grab for her outstretched trotter. “Sweet sow O’mine! Take mine hand! Paddle, Maggie! Paddle! Let me– WUAGGHH!”

A sudden monstrous shockwave through the water made me instinctively yank back my hand. A half-second later, a colossal grey shape swept out of the black depths and over my poor pig. We watched in wind-caressed silence as she was devoured in a single mouthful. After the first great horrible fish had once again dived down into the depths, a dozen more surfaced, lashing around in search of scraps. Then all was silent once more.

I looked from my sopping wet hand to the ice hole and back again.

Selladore looked at me with his mouth hanging open.

“Don’t be silly,” he said. “Nobody is going to die.”

*****

We trod lightly for the next two hours. There were a couple of slippery judderings on the creaking ice plains, but nobody plunged through and went the way of my poor steed. Edgar was by far the most relaxed of our fray-nerved crew, inching happily along the ice, pausing to gaze down through the ice at shoals of small fish below. It seemed that being transformed into a worm had tweaked something in his personality too; he simply cared less about everything now, and he barely cared before.

Every now and then I’d glance down through the ice to see what Edgar was so fascinated by, and for a moment or two I’d watch in delight at the faint shapes of the little silver fishies chasing one another beneath the ice, but then a bloody massive grey shadow would swoop beneath and scatter them and I’d clench my kingly buttocks tighter than a squid’s ear.

After a gruelling slog over the ice, the winds shifted and lifted the whipping snow that had muddled our vision for hours. It was then that I saw ahead of us, twinkling with the kiss of the dipping sun, the ice-town of Galanthus.

“Great shitting Gods,” I whispered.

You see, I had expected a grimy wooden shantytown squatting perilously over the monsters under the ice. No! Galanthus was carved entirely from the surrounding ice waves – some wizardry, some celestial masonry had rendered from the frozen waters all manner of towers and spires and delicate bridges, radiant and colour-splashed with the refracted light of the sun, compacted and spun like silk through the ethereal architecture.

I turned to Selladore, beaming. He smiled back and patted me on the arm. Glob, too, was gazing at the glinting wonderland, her mouth slightly open. To her right, Edgar sat very still, and though he lacked lips, nose, ears or eyes, I could tell that he was astounded too.

I found myself wondering whether Astra had passed this way. I hoped she had; it made me happy to think of the way her face would light up as she took in the view. I read in an old book once that a desire to share loveliness is the surest indicator of a heart’s true intentions. If you want to know who your heart truly desires, climb a mountain, and when you gaze out at the world and take in all that joy and wonder, see who you wish you were stood next to.

*****

Childlike, our dumbstruck quartet drifted abreast through the broad streets. All around us, unconcerned by our arrival, townspeople were going about their days wrapped up in cosy furs, hands clad in oversized mittens. From third-storey windows doting parents bid their ruby-nosed children farewell before sending them down ice slides, spiralling across the street into the arms of their teachers at the frozen schoolhouse.

We passed into an open marketplace, bustling and crackling. Stalls lined the square, ice carts on ice wheels, and the air buzzed with the crisp wintry bellows of hawkers and hucksters, hustlers and peddlars, costermongers, charlatans, pitchmen and quacks. Above our heads, lamplights zigzagged over the square, aiding the vanishing sun in offering light to the glimmering ice-town. The frozen brickwork of the buildings around us seemed to retain the sun’s light for a time after it set, pulsating from within with a pale blue hue.

By huge ice buildings the square was hemmed in: on one side by a glistening church with a wonky steeple, and on another by a gated stately home, and finally by a crowded tavern. We waded through the fur-clad ice-lickers, perusing the various stalls, inspecting second-hand cheese wheels, discounted vials of frog poison, portable sun dials and, via shady-looking types in dark overcoats, crushed up bundles of Boogie Tree extract.

As we neared the centre of the market, our ears were flicked by a windswept jumble of yells, a nearby crowd their apparent source. My curiosity piqued, I elbowed my way to the front of the gathering to find three townspeople engaged in a heated debate.

“Now you listen here!” squawked a man with an enormous bloated body and a very small head. “I need those taxes to make sure the town is managed properly! You are withholding money from the people, Madame Krüger!”

“Managed properly?” replied a frizzy-haired woman wrapped in a bundle of dresses and skirts. “Mayor Trout, the only thing you’ve managed properly around here is the thoroughfare of your gullet. If I pay you any more taxes my tavern’ll go under.” Then, after a moment’s ponderance, she added, “You cock.”

“Curse not, in the presence of a priest!” yelled a tin-ribbed, grey-haired man in a heavy robe. “Children, you forget yourselves. The Gods require payment, and they must be appeased!”

“Which gods?” challenged Madame Krüger. “Because I tell you what Father Curtis, there seems to be a new god pop out of the ether every time you need a new set of cutlery!”

The priest gasped a little too loud and theatrically collapsed into the arms of a bewildered onlooker, who promptly stood him back on his feet.

“Blasphemy!” he cried upon regaining his composure. “To question the word of a priest – t’is blasphemy!”

The rotund one, pleased at being momentarily forgotten from the conversation, began to back away towards his palatial ice mansion, but slipped on a discarded sliver of gouda from the second hand cheese wheel stall and fell with a clap onto his rear. The strained gusset of his trousers burst, and a shower of golden coins exploded from the garment’s inner lining.

The crowd rose with anticipation. “Cor,” cried someone with a voice like hot butter being slapped with a spatula, “that’s a pretty penny!”

As I wondered to myself why anybody would choose to keep their coinage sandwiched between their buttocks, the frizzy red woman loomed over the fallen mayor.

“I knew it!” she cried. “Give me back my doubloons.”

She stooped to rifle through the pockets of the mayor. He shrieked and writhed in response, slapping at her hands.

“Release him!” shrilled Father Curtis, hoicking up his gown and tottering over to the wrestling pair. “I would not see a single doubloon go to your den of vice. It all belongs to the Gods – who just so happen to live in my church.”

At this the priest flung himself onto the pile, and I, along with the townspeople, watched the three strangers jam fingers up one another’s nostrils and eyelids. Several minutes passed this way – the only sounds the wind and occasional grunts of “Get off!” – until the mayor was able to wiggle free.

“Right!” squealed Mayor Trout. “You’ve pushed me to this. I’m manning The Hammer!”

The crowd erupted into horrified, excited yells as the lord pushed his way through them and scurried inside his icy home. The frizzy red woman shook her head in disbelief.

“If he’s getting The Hammer, I’m getting The Axe.”

And then she was gone. The priest stamped a sandaled foot.

“Fine. I’m fetching The Club!”

With a flourish of his robes, he was gone too. The crowd was frantic, jabbering and gossiping and hopping around with glee. After a moment, the doors of the church, mansion and inn were flung asunder all at once, and the three disgruntled weirdos clomped back to the square clutching gigantic silver weapons. To my surprise, they did not stop there and begin bludgeoning one another, but instead marched straight past each other. The innkeeper took position outside the mayor’s mansion, the priest took place outside the inn, and the mayor stood outside the church.

“What’s happening?” I whispered to a nearby old man, which must have been a little too loud because he jumped out of his skin and clutched at his heart.

Once he’d fought his organs back under control, the old man explained that the dispute between the trio had raged for years. Often money was the cause for quarrel, but past topics had included accusations of food poisoning at the annual Galanthian summer barbecue, salacious rumour spreading at mass, oompah band noise complaints, a mysterious repeat-clogger of the public privy, and one incident that the old man described simply as ‘Leprechaun-gate’.

And, each time the debate became too heated, the Smashers came out: great weapons strong enough to break the ice and plunge the nearest establishment into the watery hell below.

“But that’s insane!” I hissed to the old man. “Look at this place! It’s so… it’s really, really pretty.”

The innkeeper, the priest and the lord raised their great weapons above their heads, faces reddening with effort, and held them aloft.

“This is your last chance. Cough up, or be gobbled up!” screamed the mayor.

The crowd all clapped politely at this serve.

“If you don’t give back the doubloons I’m owed… you’re on thin ice,” volleyed Madame Krüger.

A smattering of applause rang around the marketplace.

“The Gods may pass the final judgement, and yet today, here, I do declare that I be the defender of the Truth, the Light, and the Word,” shrilled the priest. His words ricocheted and echoed off the surrounding ice towers. Somebody coughed. “And the Word is… SMASH!”

I sighed and pinched the brow of my nose. All the wonder surrounding us, the ice town sitting there so astonishingly gorgeous it made me want to cry and vomit, and all these oafs were interested in was dashing it to bits. I shoved my way through the crowd, grabbed a handful of cheese wheels and stacked them up. I climbed atop them, raising me head and shoulders above the throng.

“Now hear me, ye assembled plebs!” I called in my most regal ‘obey-me-or-I-swear-to-god’ voice.

A hundred dirty faces turned to stare at my own very clean one.

“Fair Galanthians, I—”

“Who are you?” squawked someone.

“Look it doesn’t matter who I am, I–”

“Well why should we listen to you, then?”

“Because I’m trying to help you–”

“I think he’s off his rocker!”

“I’m not off my rocker, I’m the King, blast you.”

“King of what?”

A chorus of bewildered voices chimed into the discourse and the three weaponised idiots at the corners of the market began hollering once more. To top it all off I had begun to sink into the cheese wheel stack, which was far softer than I had anticipated. As I sunk lower beneath the frothing sea of angry voices, I felt my cheeks flushing.

“LOOK YOU HEINOUS PACK OF QUIVERING ARSE WARTS.”

The crowd fell silent.

“Now. It seems to me that the fair folk of Galanthus have a bit of a problem. I—”

Someone raised a hand to ask a question and I flung my longsword at them. The severed hand twirled through the air over the crowd, and the townsperson withdrew their enquiry.

“You three,” I called to the half-wits struggling to keep their weapons aloft. “Canst thou seest not thy folly? Should one of thee smash the ice, all shall smash the ice, and thy magical ice-town will be demolished. And honestly, I don’t know if thou art aware, but there are really horrible fish down there.”

A ponderous silence had fallen upon the misty-breathed crowd. I took a deep breath. They were warming to me; I could feel it. It was time to go hilt-deep.

“I can see no outcome here in which any smashing occurs without a lot more smashing after. Thy town – canst not thou see the beauty of it? In all the realms I have crossed, I have ne’er laid eyes on a wonder like this. To obliterate such a treasure over issues that could surely be resolved over a table – t’is folly! And even if thy issues can not be resolved, can we not simmer in gentle disagreement, and spare this fabled haven?

“The resolution is clear: abandon thy weapons. Smelt them, melt them – I do not admit to knowing the difference between the terms and can only advise both – and for the sake of all that is good and holy, get rid of thy smashers.”

The wind blew and ruffled the fur collars of the assembled townsfolk. I surveyed the rapt, admiring faces of the crowd with mild satisfaction. Perhaps I was beginning to get through to them at last.

“If I give up my smasher first, what’s to stop them smashing me?” said the mayor, slowly.

“And what if we give up our smashers and they have secret smashers I don’t know about?” said the priest.

“Ho ho, so that’s your plan is it?” cried the mayor. “You’ll keep secret smashers and smash me while I’m asleep!”

“Oh, don’t pretend you are not  just the sort to build a secret smasher,” said the innkeeper.

“A deflection if ever I saw one!” cried the priest. “I’d wager you have a secret smasher in the works right now!”

“I don’t need a secret smasher to smash you!” said the mayor. “I’ll do it right now!”

“Not before I smash you!” said the innkeeper.

I opened my mouth to interject once more, but Selladore leant over to me and held me back.

“I think… I think you might be making it worse, laddie,” he whispered.

“But I don’t get it,” I lamented. “Those three idiots are ruining it for everyone else. Why do they not simply kick them out?”

Glob snorted a laugh at this point and I flung a baguette at her.

“Fine,” I whined. “Let us leave this silly place.”

And so, defeated and vexed, we left the arguing behind, slipping away through the crowd and out of the town’s eastern gate, as the sun’s last rays winked across the frozen steeples.

*****

Around fifteen minutes after leaving the most beautiful town in the kingdom and possibly the world, the breeze carried to us a very large ‘crunch’, followed by a very big ‘crack’ and a very loud ‘bang’. Our quartet paused to glance back, just in time to see the gilded ice towers and glimmering minarets crumbling over themselves like a house of cards, except one that’s made entirely of ice and that people live inside and is situated on a big massive frozen sea infested with demonic hell-fish. 

As we watched the town disappear beneath the surface of the ice, and we heard the faint cries of a thousand idiots being absolutely gobbled to bits, I glanced across at Selladore, wincing.

“I think I would prefer we not mention this particular bit of our quest to Astra, if it’s all the same to thee.”