I awoke to yowling sunbeams and an absolute shag of a headache the next morning. I’d taken myself away for an early night after the brawl, but my companions had remained downstairs for some hours after, and as I lay awake on my straw mattress, held back from slumber by the lurching beat of heart, I listened to the laughter and songs and vague crashing sounds that drifted up from downstairs.
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Impetuous, I leapt from Alfonso’s back and began to sprint to the city gates. I heard Selladore call out for me, somewhere far behind, as though in another world. All that mattered now was Astra.
With the grace of a sunbeam I raced betwixt the baffled guards, who could only turn and call out to me in vain. I lighted over the city streets, unable to think of anything but my beautiful wife. The city was but a blur. I shouldered my way through the throng of peasants and followed signs for the cathedral, readying myself for the fight of my life. I could hear the church bells!
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“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.
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The next morning we waved goodbye to the shrinking earthworms below us as we ascended up and out of the Mines of Mupplecock. Glob and Selladore were operating a large hand crank on a rickety old elevator made of frayed rope and gnarled wooden planks. The worms in the meadow had no use for it, obviously; worms don’t have hands. I was clinging on for dear life as we rose, as each turn of the giant cog sent a threatening shudder through the knackered machine. It didn’t help that we had the fat useless lump that was worm Edgar dangling below, suspended from a bundle of rope because he couldn’t fit aboard the platform.
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I had not made it two feet when a brilliant white light seared into my retinas, rendering my eyes useless. I staggered forward, flailing wildly, stupid and helpless.
“Selladore! Glob! Ugh – Edgar! Thy king is blinded, help!” I called out.
They must have run in and suffered the same fate; I heard the chorus of their shrieks. We four blinded fools clattered into one another as we raced around whatever chamber we were in. The roars of the unseen creatures were deafening, coming from every side. I tripped over something soft and furry, sailed arse-over-bosom through the air, and landed in a clanking heap on the floor. My sword fell from my grip, leaving me defenceless. I felt hot, stinky breath in my ear, and span around to punch with all my might whatever beast was coming for me. My armoured fist connected with the monster’s fleshy hide, and I heard a squeal. The monster backed away as I rubbed my eyes hastily, urging them to adjust to the light.
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We rode (and jogged) for two days through the cherry blossom forest, and the journey was largely uneventful except for one point where Edgar got dragged away in the night by a swarm of goblins and we had to go and get him before they could dissolve him in their subterranean gunge tanks. Aside from that the forest was lovely, and I wrote down in my diary that I simply must take Astra this way on the route home.
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When I awoke it was mid-afternoon and my skin was hot and my mouth was dry. With a groan I tried to move, but something held me in place. I glanced down at my body and found myself quite naked, roped to the mast.
“Ugh.”
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The cannonball burst through the ship’s hull sending splinters the size of bananas stinging through the air, pinged neatly through a bewildered crewmember’s torso, and came to rest in a collection of grain sacks. The newly disembowelled pirate glanced down at the gaping hole in his stomach, murmured something inconsequential, and collapsed backwards into a collection of pots and pans.
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The jangly woman wasn’t joking when she said we wouldn’t last an hour.
Barely twenty minutes into our flight, a bellowing horn blast rattled our ribcages and sent Margaret into a panicked bucking frenzy. Given that I’d only been mutilated half an hour earlier and hadn’t quite mastered the art of riding one handed, I was immediately slung from my sow and treated to a mouthful of hot sand.
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It’s a curious experience, having your hand neatly clipped off by a mythical creature. The bird barely seemed to move; its feet stayed planted on the ground, its feathers never ruffled. Without a sound its gyroscopic head simply pecked at me, and its beak snicked off my left hand with all the clinical efficiency and utter nonchalance of a barber’s scissors. A millisecond later, the bird’s head was back in place, its eyes watching me with faint curiosity.
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