joegoda | Stonecaster chapter three

'A long time ago, and far, far away you owned a dog,' said the voice in his head. 'It doesn't matter right now, son. Focus on what is going around you. Ask the old man for more information about the King's men.'

Bert was leading Peter through an amazing thicket of trees, shrubbery, crawling things and singing birds. An emerald green lizard as long as his forearm flashing into existence on the nearly unseeable path, stared at the two for just a second and then flashed away again. The canopy of the forest, broken by wide open sections, hung high over head, thirty - forty feet up.

"Bert," Peter began... "The story of how I ended up here."

Bert, focusing on the path and what may lie up ahead, didn't turn around. "I was a-figuring that you'd get around to it sooner or later."

"To be honest, Bert...," Peter considered his words carefully. "I'm not exactly sure what happened before you found me. I have a sense of falling, yes, and I seem to remember of a lot of pain, but other than that, I can't remember what happened to me, exactly." He let out a sigh, and hoped it would convey enough sorry and misery. "I'm not even sure that Peter is my right name. It sounded right and fit right in my head, so it was the first thing that popped out."

A long tailed bird sailed over head. It was colored in all the hues of the rainbow and it sang out a long, trilling scream.

Bert looked up without stopping, startled at the bird. A second passed and then a smile creased his face, making it look less seriously hounddogish. "That would be Honey, looking for us."

"Honey?" Peter was having a hard time keeping up with the older man, and his breath was coming raggedly. "Your wife's name is Honey?"

Bert barked a laugh, a hooting sound that made Peter think of chimps in a zoo. "Odd idn't it? A beekeeper to have a wife named Honey. Only... she's not exactly my wife, young Peter, as it is. See now, a man can have a missus without all that hooey baloeey, can't he now?" Without waiting for an answer Bert plunged through a massive thicket that stood at least nine feet tall and seemed to run in either direction for miles. "Mind the thorns!"

There was bright sunlight on the other side of the tall, fence like hedge. Peter had escaped with only minor scrapes and was picking the last of the inch long thorns out of his skin when Bert spoke up.

"The King's men don't come past the fence row. We're safe here." Bert stood bent, hands on knees, breathing in and out slightly ragged breaths. A small wheezing could be heard with every exhale. "I heard of things like what you described, young Peter. Had an uncle who fell off his roof, oncet. Fell off a ladder and couldn't remember his own name or his wife for a week." Bert winked, conspiratorially. "Course, that may have been his plan all along, as it were."

Peter, plucking the last thorn from his shirt sleeve said, "I thought that was your grandfather, Bert."

"My grandfather?" Bert's eyebrows flashed together to form a bushy worm. "I don't think so. Did you know him?" Peering harshly at Peter, Bert shook his head. "No, I don't think so. You're far too young, as it is. How old would you be, young Peter?"

'Tell him thirty-two,' said the voice in his head.

"I think... thirty-two sounds about right." Peter said, uncertain. It bothered him that he could not, truly, remember how old he was.

He looked around at his surroundings. The dim light of the forest and the height of the fence row lay in stark contrast in his mind. The field in which he and Bert stood was enormous, sprinkled liberally with wild flowers, so that it looked like a multicolored snow had fallen. Some were buttery yellow and others that were a bit more purplish and still others were a bright red and there were patches of dark blue. Here and there, the field was dotted with little square boxes no taller than his waist, rising above the flowers and grasses like tiny monoliths. Around each of the boxes there was a furious movement, not quite seen and now that he was focused on them, he could hear a soft, deep toned droning all around him.

"Bee houses?" He asked.

"Yep," Bert said, nodding and smiling. "Bee houses. Told you I was a beekeeper, didn't I? What good would it be to be a beekeeper without bee houses, as it were? Not much good at all, I would imagine. Plenty hard to keep bees and collect honey if there weren't bee houses."

"Hmm." Peter nodded at the obvious logic. "You don't get many visitors, do you, Bert?"

"Oh my no!" Bert stretched the last kink out of his long muscles and started off across the field. "Not since the Kings men started to show themselves. Any folks that would have come to visit would have to cross the King's forest to find me, now wouldn't they?" He stopped and turned, a puzzled face. "But then, you wouldn't know that, would you now? Brains all jostled the way there were from your fall or whatever, such as it were." He frowned a bit and looked up at the sun, shading his eyes with his hand. "Come along, young Peter. The missus would be just about putting on the kettle oncet we reached the house."

"How is it that you happened to be here, Bert?" Peter stretched his legs in trying to keep up with the older man. He was having a hard time believing that Bert had to stop and catch his breath after the forest. He suspected that Bert did it more for Peter's own sake. "It seems like we're going quite a ways, so you must have be far from home, yes? How is it that you were out here to find me?"

"Ah, young Peter, that is a story in and of itself, as it were." Bert showed no sign of stopping or slowing and was currently wading a small stream that meandered it's burbly way though the field. "Mind the slippery parts," he warned.

"Last night, I was suppin' with the misses, as it were suppin time," Bert continued, "and we heard all manner of racket coming from out side the house. Honey told me that I had best take a look at it, so I slipped into my togs and popped out the door to take a look-see at what might be goin' on. Well, young Peter, I have to tell you that I saw a sight that I had never seen before, and probably never will again. I had to call the missus to the door to see what was what so that I could make sure it wasn't just me that was seein' it." He stopped while he grabbed a low hanging branch that had tried to smack him in the face and shoved it out of his way. "Now then, that will be enough of that, won't it now?"

Peter ducked under the same branch, which he could have sworn actually moved to reach down to grab at the top of his head. "What did you see, Bert? What was it?"

Bert stopped for a moment, threw back his cloak and reached into his bag. He sprinkled a bit of whitish powder on the ground and gave a shy smile to Peter. "It's for the little folk, young Peter. They do like their sweets, don't they now? Crystal honey, young Peter. They just loves it and it don't hurt me none to share, as it were. Besides, you never know when you might need their good graces, as it is."

'Little folk,' said Hugh, deep in Peter's mind. 'Make a note. This is a place of superstition."

"Bert," Peter said in his outside voice, "what did you see?"

"Well sir," Bert said after turning back to his path. "It were the most purple and blackish sort of cloud, but not like any cloud I've ever witnessed. Most clouds have lumps and bumps and little curly parts that stick out, don't they now? Little wispy parts, as it were. This cloud, though, it were hanging in the sky, not even moving, and it was smooth all over. No wispy parts. No bumps and lumps. I turned to the missus and I says to her, 'Bugs! Bugs from Space!' is what I says."

"I pointed up and Honey agreed with that it was a most passing strange thing. 'I bet they here to take the bees!' I says to her, and she says 'Bert, that's just stupid talk. What would bugs from space want with your bees?'. 'I dunno, I says to here, but still, bugs is bugs and maybe they think they're sort of rescuin' their friends or their family, as it were.' So I put on my cloak and grabbed my bag and headed out to the honey field."

"Well sir, when I got here, the big ol' cloud that wasn't a cloud had moved past the field and headed over the forest. I followed it as I could, tryin' to see what was what, as it were. It was somethin' any man would do, isn't it now?

"So I crossed into the wood, as it were, through the very same hole I took you through, and followed that cloud till I got to the spot where you were laying there, not quite dead, as it were. 'Course, you weren't there when I got there, there were only the shadow of that big thing up in the sky."

The two of them were climbing a rise in the terrain and when they reached the top, Bert took a breath or two and pointed down the other side as a small copse of short trees. "That's my home, young Peter." Drawing in a large breath and putting two fingers in his mouth, he let out with a loud trill that sounded to be the double of the rainbow colored bird Peter saw back in the forest.

Bert turned and gave a wink. "That's how we tells each other where we are, as it were." He started down the hill and Peter followed. "I reckon that if I was to show up without telling Honey I was near, she'd try to take my head off with a flax knife, more than likely." He said this with more than a little a bit of pride in his voice and he chuckled. "Honey is a pip, that she is."

"Now then, young Peter, once I got there, to that spot just below the belly of that cloud that weren't a cloud, I sat and watched."

As they approached the small copse of trees, Peter could see that the trees had grown so close together that they formed a single wall, and there was a thin door cut in that wall of trunks.

"I didn't have to wait long, sir. Not long at all, because as soon as I got my little fire started, there was a boom like the biggest, most largest rumble of thunder I had ever heard. It was so strong, as it were, that it blew out my fire, didn't it now! And then, then there were this flash of purple - purple, I tell you! Purple light and the whole thing were gone, disappeared, as it were, without a trace."

Bert took off his cloak and hung it, along with his large leather bag, on a peg just outside the door. "Honey would skin me if I brought dust or nasties in to the house."

He opened a small door, hidden from sight, that lay just next to the bigger door. He pulled out two long handled brushes. They were stiff bristled and heavy made. The bristles stuck out one side of the top of the handled and ran a full quarter of the way down the two foot length. He handed one of the brushes to Peter.

"Better brush yerself off, young Peter," he cautioned very serious. "Honey doesn't know you're with me, and it wouldn't do to upset her, now would it?" Bert started brushing off the sleeves of his shirt and the legs of his trousers and Peter followed suit.

"See now, young Peter," Bert continued while vigorously brushing his backside. "After that big doohickey disappeared, I heard the most awfullest crashing coming from high up in the trees. I was pretty scared, as it were, as I didn't have no idea of what was coming down, but it was coming down fast, as it were, gravity being such as it is."

"I moved myself as far away from that tree as I could and I didn't have much to wait, as it were, because CRASH and BANG, there you were; lying under that tree, barely scratched and lookin' all sorts of dead. But dead you were not, as you know, seein' as you're standing here. So, young Peter, I have to ask you again, and pardon me for doing so like this, but who are you, and what were you doing falling from the sky?"

Bert pulled open the door to his house and a woman stepped out, carrying rope. At least, Peter thought she was a woman and it seemed to him she was carrying rope. She had green skin and large round eyes with deep black pupils the size of his fists and her arms weren't carrying ropes. Her arms were ropes! Rope like vines, thick and green and she had many, many arms, arms that whipped out of the doorway and coiled around Peter's chest, entrapping his arms and legs. Once ensnared and helpless, Peter was drug into the house, upright and immobile.

'Hmm,' Hugh hummed inside his head. 'This doesn't look good, now does it?'