The Tale of Magweed and Griffin, part two

Author’s Note: This story takes place prior to events in Untold Tales of the Parodyverse #282: Beyond the Fields We Know, or Through the Looking Glass

In a humble cottage, in an enchanted, forbidden forest lives the fairy princess Magweed and her guardian Auntie. But things are not quite as they seem in the forest. Maggie is just the latest in a long line of fairy princesses, all of whom have met with sudden, mysterious ends when the fairy godmother Camellia runs out of hopes for their potential to be the next Queen of the Fey. And Auntie is anything but a kind and loving protector… But unbeknownst to them both, this little princess is not all alone. She has a remarkable imaginary friend… invisible, intangible, unheard by anyone but Magweed, and especially resourceful… even for a griffin.

At a wedding for the children of Myrna Dormouse and Michael Fieldmouse, the animals of the forest found themselves under attack by Auntie’s minions, the horrible and vicious gothenmanders. The Princess was able to organize an escape with the help of Griffin. While Maggie led the ravening gothenmanders off, a herd elk carried the party-goers to safety, and the king elk himself returned to rescue the princess from drowning in the river.

But not everyone was so lucky. Michael and Myrna fell into Auntie’s clutches, and the hopes for a happy ever after ending to Magweed’s tale grew a little dimmer…

The days remained warm and the skies remained clear, but the observant denizens of the forbidden woods could tell that change was coming soon enough. There was a crackle in the air at night… a build up of energy and anticipation, as if Mother Nature was taking a deep breath to prepare herself for the chilly plunge into the autumn days to come.

But underlying the reliable march of the seasons was a growing sense of foreboding, one that was brought on by changes that were neither as predictable nor as welcome. Rumors began to drift from tree to burrow of great discord outside of the woods…

“The roads to the north are choked with the miserable and the frightened” Fletcher Owl reported. “The carrion birds brag that their numbers blacken out the sky to the far east, and gloat that even so they are hard pressed to keep up with demand.” He bristled at the comment.

Mr. Blakeslee folded back his long rabbit ears. “Surely such misery cannot be finding it’s way here?” He sniffed worriedly. “The Lady would simply not have it…”

Maeby Dormouse snorted, sounding for all the world like her late mother Myrna. “That Lady cobbles the streets for misery’s path” She spat, looking up to the rolling white clouds above the treetops. “Nothing stays hidden forever, Mr. Blakeslee. As me mum used to say; No matter how twisted the path, events manage to find their way to the end of the trail. Secrets will out.”

“You may be more right than you know, lass” the Owl observed. “The gulls reported that a sleek ship was seen on the westward portage of the river not a day ago… A ship as white as bone, with golden leaves for sails.”

“Surely not!” Mr. Blakeslee gasped. “The Lady returns so soon? And on the river itself?”

“It would be a brazen move, even for her, to break treaty like that” Maeby noted shrewdly. “Can it be she’s found what she’s been looking for at last?”

“The right child?” the rabbit asked worriedly.

“The gulls couldn’t say” Fletcher Owl reported. “The feathers of those who so much as circled the ship were shorn from their wings in mid flight, leaving them to plummet to the ground.” He shuddered in quiet horror at such an ignominious end for any bird of flight. “I don’t see anyone in the wood getting close enough to that ship to find what it has in store for us, one way or another.”

The fourth member of this emergency council set his jaw, completely unbeknownst to the others. “We’ll just see about that…” Griffin growled to himself.

The fairy princess Magweed scraped the pick across the hard ground of the garden’s edge, trying to remember what the badger family had taught her about digging her way past large rocks. It had been two days since Griffin had told her that a matter required his “most urgent attention”, which had caused her to tease him for trying to sound so formal and important… but even her most playful jibes couldn’t shake him from his mood. That had left her with a sense of unease… one that had only been growing the longer he had been away.

It was nothing new for Griffin to take a trip to explore or to chase down some information… or possibly some imaginary prey. (Maggie wasn’t quite sure how that worked, although he never seemed to eat or drink anything in front of her, and so she thought it might be impolite to ask directly. “Griffins are highly sensitive about matters of privacy”, he had informed her on many occasions, and even though she had been the one to make up most of their shared knowledge on griffins, she had never deemed to challenge him on this point.) But as this current trip of his was extending well beyond private time, she was growing more than concerned. He had never been gone for two nights in a row before, and as the sun set on this third day even her increasing chores couldn’t keep her mind from worrying at the knot of fears which tightened around her.

When she was being exceptionally honest with herself, she would have to admit he wasn’t the only one for which she feared. Even before Griffin left, the creatures of the forest had begun to stay far away from the enchanted cottage and Maggie herself. Now it had progressed to the point where she had actually seen Pa squirrel rush to herd his children inside when he saw the princess approaching. Her sense of dread was growing about her as quickly as her sense of isolation.

“Child, answer to me…” Auntie’s voice crackled, scraping through her thoughts more readily than the pick was scraping through the rocky soil. “You need to be more attentive, Dearie… I’ve been calling for you.”

“I’m… I’m sorry ma’am” Magweed replied quickly, spinning to face her with a pale face.

“Indeed, I know you are. Come inside and eat…” the thing shaped like an old woman ordered sweetly, with a sickening smile as the shadows of the glade stretched out towards the child like twisted fingers. “It just so happens that I’ve prepared a special treat, just for you. Wouldn’t do to let it grow cold on the plate.”

Maggie willed her fingers to let go of the pick, which she had been clutching protectively in front of herself. She smoothed the garden dirt out her simple frock and, swallowing the cold feeling creeping up from her stomach, trod up the path and through the door being held invitingly by Auntie.

Inside, the air was thick with a new scent… something pungent, gamey and charred, decidedly not the gruel that was their normal meal. She felt herself being prodded along to the table by hard, cold fingers, and then she was seated, with her chair pressed inward until the tabletop dug into her chest.

“Events are coming full circle, child. I thought it time to celebrate, and knew of just the perfect way.” Auntie brandished a large, gleaming knife and looked down upon her hungrily. “I hired a huntsman to procure our treat…” she explained, bowing aside in her feigned feeble manner to reveal a turning spit over the hearth fire. She hobbled over to it, careful to keep an eye twisted back upon the girl, savoring the blood draining from the little girls face as if it were the bouquet of a fine wine. Her maw cracked into a smile, licked by her awful tongue as she hacked into the thing on the spit. With relish, she delivering a bloody, rare piece of meat upon a metal plate in front of the little girl. “Go on, child… eat up” she encouraged with shining eyes, licking the length of the blade.

Maggie sat unmoving, hands clenched at her side, her stomach fluttering wildly. “I’m… not hungry.”

“I didn’t ask if you were hungry, now did I?” Auntie answered, sitting herself down on the opposite side of the table. She lifted an entire cut of meat off of her own plate and tore into it with teeth that seemed far too big. “I didn’t ask you anything. Eat.”

The princess swallowed with a dry mouth. “Wh…what is it?” she asked in a choked voice.

The old woman’s tiny eyes flashed triumphantly. “Elk” she hissed triumphantly. “There had been a large herd of them in the valley to the north, but it seems they suddenly moved on last spring. It took a great deal of effort for my hunter to track them down, but then, they say the effort of the meal is the real seasoning.” She ripped off another piece of her cut with delight, licked at the juices running down her hairy chin. “I wanted to be sure you knew just how much trouble I’m willing to go to on your behalf, Dearie… Indeed, I never want you to forget it.” she smiled to show all her many teeth as she admired the cut before her. “I’m told this one in particular was a kingly specimen… antlers that could cradle a small girl with ease.”

“Please…” the little girl croaked, weakly trying to push away from the awful table. “I’m not feeling good… I… I’d like to go to bed.”

The woman gave a rumbling sigh of pleasure, savoring more than just the meal. “After your dinner. The hunter was very kind to help you to this meal, princess. We can’t let it go to waste, now can we? I just wouldn’t allow it.” She leaned forward and locked burning eyes with her young charge. “We must always make sure those who help you get the proper appreciation for their efforts. Now… Clean Your Plate.”

Alone with Auntie, tears blurring her eyes, the fairy princess Magweed reached for her fork.

The Aspen’s Reach cut through the crystal clear river water, leaving eddies swirling behind its path, twisting the river surface into graceful spirals. The sails billowed in the stiff inland breeze, rustling the individual leaves of the living masts that strained to catch the wind.

“Ah… Faerie” Camellia, would-be Queen of the Fey, sighed to herself, her hands grasping the white bark of the ship’s railing with a fierce possessive gleam in her eyes. “Finally, to be back home again. To stay.” She turned to the crewmember at the bow. “What’s the sounding? Are we under two fathoms?”

“Yes mistress… we’re a quarter less twain.”

The faerie smiled coldly. “This will do nicely” she noted, eying the bottleneck in the river. “Drop anchor. Dump the casks.”

The crew scrambled to fulfill their mistress’s orders, and axes quickly caved in the tops of the wooden casks lining the railing before they were thrown over in their entirety.

A thick black substance began to pool on the top of the shining mountain river, and irridescant film mixed with the swirls of the river.. “More” Camellia ordered with satisfaction. “Empty the hold. All of it goes in.”

The captain of the vessel, a lithe tanned woman, quailed. . “Mistress… I… Is this the only way?” she asked, looking over the railing at what they had wrought with a sick look.

“My dear Caladium, believe me…” Camellia’s eyes and her voice burned. “…An eternity of supposed exile in that dreary world has given me plenty of time to consider this campaign, as well as to consider how to use that exile to my advantage.” She set her perfect jaw. “I’ll not be cast off this land again, even if I have to burn it all down just to rebuild it underneath me.” Her eyes reflected the spreading filth across the water. “I have no admiration for mortals, but their methods can be brutally effective in ways. If I must suffer their touch, my enemies shall feel it tenfold.”

“But, my Lady… this indignity…”

“She is not one of us, this river queen…” Camellia hissed. “She bought her passage here with Rhinegold, and now she dares to claim dominion over these waters of the Fey! MY waters by right!” She spun on the crew. “More! All of it goes I said!”

“There!” Caladium whispered suddenly, grabbing her mistress by the arm. “Do you hear it?”

It was a low, hollow sound… like wind over the mouth of a mead jug. But it was growing, becoming a keening that rattled the deck planks and rained leaves down off of the living masts. Suddenly, the blackened water of the river erupted around the ship, and the befouled figure of a woman emerged… a terrible beauty marred by the viscous sludge that made up a substantial part of her being. “Camellia?!" she seethed in fury. “It is your noxious touch I feel upon the waters… To even cross my running boundaries is forbidden to you, and yet you dare?”

“I do indeed” Camellia sneered, cowed not at all by the display. “I’ve returned, Lorelei… and I’ll not be barred by your waters.” Too late, the outraged Lorelei sensed the trap as the crew overturned barrels of earth onto the deck, encircling the water spirit. The living wood of the ship shot roots into the riverbed, anchoring it to the ground. The river queen convulsed as the ship no longer floated free, effectively becoming an island unto itself.

“Poor, wet, little creature… Ne’er to grace the land, isn’t that the arrangement?” The hateful Faerie sneered, circling the gasping water being. “…the winds would cry, and many men would die… And all the waves would bow down to the Lorelei” she quoted with scorn. “And now you bow down yourself, you putrid Nixe.”

“To some disgraced and exiled minor Fey?” the river queen hissed, struggling to rise. “To one who would befoul her birth lands with this… this…”

“Waste” Camellia gloated. “Toxic waste… specifically in this case, crude oil, antifreeze… really whatever common substances the humans use to choke off the health of their world, brought here as my personal gift to you. Life among unchecked humanity has taught me to think differently, you see. What they do thoughtlessly, I find purpose within. Tell me, have you ever heard of the mighty Cuyahoga?”

The Lorelei just glared at her, her beautiful face twisted in pain and swirling with chemicals.

“It lies a good distance from your precious lost Rhine, admittedly. Ah, but it has achieved its own fame since you fled the world of man. What the humans and the Cuyahoga river have taught me is this…” She nodded her head, and the crewmembers lining the stern raised bows notched with flaming arrows. “…Rivers can burn” she smiled evilly.

“Maggie!” Griffin called as he entered her darkened room. “Maggie, get up! We have to go!”

“Griff?” the fairy princess asked in a small voice from her bed, her head rising.

“Yes, I’m back… You have to get up, you need…” he paused, concerned. She was curled into a little ball atop her bed, her eyes starring and her face pale. “Maggie? What’s wrong…? Have you been sick?”

“A few times” she admitted, swallowing. “…I’ll be all right.”

“Maggie, listen to me… We have to go. I don’t know how much time we have.”

She blinked and her eyes began to focus, and just as quickly the fear returned to them. She half sat up and looked around the room. “Griff? What is it? Where did you go?”

“I’ll tell you as we run…”

“Run?” she gasped.

“We’re leaving this place” he told her, resolutely. “Forever.”

She had nothing to pack, but Griffin insisted she bundle herself up in whatever clothes she could find, including wrapping her feet in strips of the coarse blanket from her bed. For the first time since the incident at Mortimer and Maeby’s wedding, the Princess Magweed again crept out of her bedroom window and into the moonlit enchanted glade. “Are any of the gothenmanders out?” she whispered fearfully.

“The new pair” Griffin noted in an odd voice. They had never gotten around to naming the latest of Auntie’s ravening gothenmanders… Griffin didn’t like to talk about them, and after what had happened with Snotlocker, Maggie found her hands shaking whenever she considered the vicious beasts. “They’re investigating something to the east. That’s why we’ll be heading west.”

Magweed froze just inside the shadows of the trees. “West?” she gasped. “Griffin, we can’t cross into the Witchwood!”

“We have to. I’m sorry… we have to go where Auntie and the others won’t want to follow, Maggie. We have to risk it. I…” he took a deep breath. “I can get us safely through. I’m sure of it.”

Knots began to tangle in the princess’s belly, but she began to move again. “What’s going on? This isn’t about the Elk King at all, is it?”

“The Elk King?”

“Griff… what’s happening?” she whispered, picking her way through the underbrush as fast as she could. “Where did you go?”

Griffin was silent for so long that Magweed began to fear she could no longer hear him over the thudding of her own heart. “There was a ship coming up the river…” he began haltingly. “I needed to know who was on board… It turned out to be your godmother.”

The news itself was merely confusing, but the delivery of it left her chilled. “But… it’s not midwinter…” she whispered tightly. Her godmother would visit once a year and only once, near the midwinter solstice, to look over the young princess with a bland smile but disapproving eyes. Then she and Auntie would confer in the root cellar, where even Griffin couldn’t get close enough to overhear them. At least, that’s what he always told her…

“She’s come back… and she says it’s to stay” Griffin replied. “Do you remember why you were never to cross the river?”

Maggie nodded. “Because the river hates godmother, and everything associated with her. Including her princess.” The girl swallowed thickly as she headed deeper into the forest. She didn’t add “Just like the wicked witch.”

“Auntie tells you that just to control you.”

“No” she answered carefully, remembering how she could feel the river’s desire to drown her when she had plunged within. “Some things are true. Even from Auntie.”

The imaginary friend considered that in silence for a while. “Even so… the river won’t be a threat again. Godmother captured its spirit and…” she could sense his shudder and all of his feathers standing on end. “The river is dead… I saw them… I saw…”

“I… understand” Maggie answered out of concern for her friend. However, just how one could kill the river, and moreover why anyone would ever deem to do so were beyond her imagination.

“While it… she… was dying… begging… Godmother spoke to her. Told her why she had come back. What she was going to do. Told her about the baby.”

Magweed froze. “A…baby?”

The nightmares had become regular occurrences at this point, ever since Gnarl had made his venomous toast at the doomed wedding party. Never quite the same, never quite fully remembered, the dreams were strange and confusing jumbles of images in which Magweed seemed to be any number of little girls living in that cottage with Auntie. But they all had the same, somehow terrifying ending… the sound of a crying baby, and image of passing through the root cellar door.

“That’s why we need to run, Maggie…”

And with a nod, run the princess did.

She had not said anything to Griffin when the trees had stopped loving her, or when the roots had stopped lying down to ease her passing. But even he could tell when the briars stretched out to bite into her skin, when the branches clawed at her arms and when thorns jabbed into her legs that they had crossed the invisible boundaries of the enchanted wood and out of the fairy princess’s domain. The Witchwood tore and tangled at her, trying in its subtle way to drag her down to the forest floor. The exposed skin on her limbs was crisscrossed with puffy, angry red welts and scrapes as she began to limp along, and her breathing had become noticeably more ragged. Still, he did not dare suggest they halt until they came to a small clearing, deep within the baleful wood.

Finally she collapsed with her back to a large granite rock, not trusting the trees to shade her. In the cold moonlight she looked wan and sickly as she closed her eyes and leaned back, her chest heaving. “I’m sorry…” she apologized. “I’ll be ready to go in a moment.”

“That’s okay, I’ve got a crick in one of my wings…” he told her with a theatrical, unseen stretch. “I think we should rest here for a bit.”

She sniffed and nodded, swallowing dryly. Griffin wished he had kept enough of his head about him to suggest that she steal a wineskin of water from the kitchen before they had left. He wished he had done a lot of things differently, in hindsight…

“Is the witch about?” the princess asked in a hushed voice.

“No” he assured her. “Griffins can smell a witch a long way off. Anyway, Fletcher Owl says that he doesn’t think the Wicked Witch of the South West is real… that she didn’t exist when his grandfather was flying. He says the story of three bards getting lost in the woods with only their scrolls and lutes ever being found was made up recently, and that the woods here are just your average haunted forest.”

“Oh” she answered, relieved a bit. She poked at the dirt of the forest floor with a stick, shifting the fallen leaves about absently before drawing a deep breath. “What did godmother say about her?” Maggie finally asked hesitantly. There was no question in Griffin’s mind as to who she was asking about.

“Her parents were somebody important, I gather” he answered, keeping watch on the dark forest around them, especially back along their path. “Her father was some kind of writer, and her mother came from the stars.” He bit his beak as he tried to remember it all. “Or maybe she was a star… Something about her being made of light. The mother was the confusing part.”

Magweed looked up into the night sky. “Did they love her? Did they give her to godmother?”

Griff sighed. “I don’t know Maggie.”

She went back to prodding the forest floor with undue interest. After a great pause she asked “Does she have her own griffin?”

“What?”

The young princess did not look up. “Does she… I didn’t know if you could tell… Does she have a Griffin of her own?”

Griff watched her carefully. “No… Not that I could tell” he told her.

She nodded, eyes still on the ground, and swallowed. “Will you be going back to her then?”

So that was it. He walked over next to her, and imagined himself sitting down, leaning against her side. “Let her dream up her own best friend” he declared.

Magweed sniffed, with tears in her eyes. “You shouldn’t help me any more, you know. You’ll get hurt… Auntie will get you too, somehow.”

He flexed his talons angrily. “The day Auntie can see enough of me to get will be the last day she ever sees anything” he vowed fiercely.

She smiled through her tears and leaned closer to him. “I never would have survived in that awful place without you” she told him. “Auntie would have gotten to me. I would be what godmother wanted.”

“You’re stronger than you think, Mags” he told her, remembering how she stood up to Snotlocker… how she took command and organized the escape from the wedding. “You’re stronger than Auntie… at least that way.”

She shook her head. “I’ve seen it in my dreams. The endings. The other little girls were special, but they were alone, and Auntie broke them into pieces well before the dreams ended and they went to the cellar.” She looked sadly back the way they had come. “There’s only so much you can handle alone, no matter how special you are.”

He looked back down their path as well. “Maggie, what are you saying?”

Magweed stood up painfully and closed her eyes. “We have to go back. We have to rescue the princess… before she’s all alone.”

Griffin leapt to his feet. “That’s crazy! We need to get far away… Run until we…” He trailed off, concerned. Too late, he made out what he was hearing as the bowstring released. “Maggie! Run!" he cried.

There was a flash of light that blinded Griffin to the panicked face of his childhood friend and sent him sprawling. It wasn’t until his eyes cleared that he could make out the fairy princess unmoving within a block of crystal, her eyes wide with fear, a tiny dart frozen just inches from her chest.

A small man clambered out of the woods, scratching his head and regarding a tiny crossbow. “I didn’t know I could even set this thing on freeze” he wondered aloud. He looked up at the encased girl in bafflement… and then he two was enveloped in a flash of light.

“That’s because I did it” the Wicked Witch of the South West informed the now frozen elf with satisfaction as she stepped through the brush from the other side of the clearing. Griffin could only stare at her in frightened wonder as she came to regard her two new prizes. “Curiouser and curiouser” she mused to herself, gently tracing her fingers over the crystal encasing Magweed. “Well, well, well …” the witch whispered with a smile. “What a lovely gift for Camellia to send me… We will have to find a way to thank her, won’t we, my pretty?”

to be continued…

Footnotes:

The Lorelei (originally Loreley) is a rock outcropping on the bank of the Rhine marking a narrow, treacherous turn in the river. Various German folktales have cropped up about it and the murmuring sound it was said to make, centering on a heartbroken maiden Lorelei who threw herself to her death of the rock and was reborn as a nixe, a water spirit luring fishermen in to their deaths. The Nibelung Treasure has been said to lie beneath the stone. Camellia quotes from the song The Loreley by Blackmore’s Night.

The Cuyahoga River flows through Cleveland and into Lake Erie. It is, quite honestly, most famous for being so polluted as to catch on fire multiple times, culminating in a blaze in 1969 that finally prodded the nation to adopt a clean water act.

Michael Fieldmouse and Myrna Dormouse were caught by Auntie and transformed into the latest of her Gothenmanders. Griffin couldn’t bear to tell Maggie this news, and instead made up a story that they had fled to safety to find help.

The elf Zebulon was pressed into service by the Queen of Faerie to hunt down the princess Magweed and kill her, thus ending the threat of her insurrection. He seems to have caught up with her as of this chapter, although the hows will likely have to wait for Untold Tales.

Post By Visionary contines the adventures in the Mythlands Sun Aug 13, 2006 at 08:16:27 pm EDT	Subject The Tale of Magweed and Griffin, part two

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