Frek and the Elixir (8 page)

Frek was trying to process all the different things he'd heard. It was like juggling—and he couldn't juggle. One by one the memories dropped from his grasp and rolled off. Eventually he gave up and began putting on his angelwings. He knew for sure that he should keep running from the counselors—he just didn't know which way.

A noise was coming from uphill. A quiet sobbing. It had started soon after the counselors left, but only now had Frek identified it. Someone up there was hurt and crying. Frek headed up the dark slope, using his angelwings to move in long, low leaps. When he got closer to the sound, it turned into words.

“I've pinched my tail,” said a man's rough, high-pitched voice. “Please help me, Frek.”

Startled, Frek flew straight up into the air and found a perch on the high bare limb of a rotted-out mapine tree, pale in the darkness. He'd just remembered he was in the Grulloo Woods. The clearing beyond the dead tree was a pool of night.

“How do you know my name?” called Frek into the gloom.

“Your dog told me,” said the little voice, growing conversational. “He said you might come. Please help me. I'm trapped.”

“How do you mean?” asked Frek.

“My long, clever tail,” came the raspy tenor from the blackness. “It's pinched. I was splitting logs this afternoon to get at the veins of nutfungus. It's got a spicy taste my folk are fond of. I was holding the wedge with my tail, and when those counselors came buzzing in I was so frightened that I let the wedge pop out. The log snapped shut on me.” The unseen little man dropped his tone nearly to a whisper. “If Okky finds me like this I'll meet a sorry end. Hop down here and free me, Frek. Drive in the wedge and pry the log open.”

Frek was on the point of flapping down when something stopped him. “You have a tail?”

“A fine woodsy one,” confided the voice, growing stronger again. “It looks like a stick, but it's terribly strong and leathery. I can lie in a bush and stick my tail up into the air and when a little bird lands on it—
zickzack,
Jeroon's got his lunch! Come on, boy, don't keep me waiting.”

“You're a Grulloo,” exclaimed Frek. “You eat people.”

“Your Gov promotes that toony tale to make you hate us. Grulloos all cannibals? Poppycock! I live on fruit, vegetables, and the odd fowl. I'm a simple woodsman; I gather what I can—rugmoss, nutfungus, please plant seeds—and I barter my takings for what I can get from my fellow Grulloos. Groceries, in the main, with the rest going toward furnishing and decorating my burrow. I've a hand-made chair, a bed, and a fine Grulloo carpet of cultured rugmoss. Once my home's to the liking of my Ennie, the two of us can hatch out an egg, Gaia willing. Yes, yes, Grulloos are family people, as peaceable as you Nubbies. Precious few of us are man-eaters.” The Grulloo lowered his voice again. “But if I'm trapped here much longer, it's the dreadful Okky who'll make a meal of me. She eats her victims' heads, you know, starting with the nose and ending with the brain. I've chanced upon her grisly leavings more than once. It's said that Okky sells our refined cerebral essences to NuBioCom, as she's got no eggs to offer them. Free me, Frek, free me before Okky finds us. She'll eat you, too!”

“You won't hurt me?” asked Frek.

“Aid me this once and I'm your friend forever. Such larks we'll have, Frek. I've always wanted to know a Nubby. Jeroon's my name. I'm the fellow to have at your side.”

“I do need help,” said Frek. “The counselors broke my memory.”

“Peeked you, they did, eh? I've got some stim cells in my burrow that'll heal that. Come on down here, boy. My axe is next to me, but the wedge flew off to the other side of the clearing.”

Still Frek hesitated. “Can I look at you first? Can you make a light?”

The Grulloo grumbled a bit and began rustling in the dark. A spark shone as he fired up a matchbud and lit his—pipe? Except in toons, Frek had never seen anyone smoke before.

In the darkness of the woods, the glow of the pipe was enough to light the clearing. The Grulloo was little more than a man's head with a pair of arms—or were they legs? Little legs with hands that he walked upon. He had a big nose and browned, leathery skin. His eyes were hidden by the brim of a dark blue felt cap worn tight and low on his head. He carried a knife tucked beneath a strap of the cap, the blade lying along one side of the crown. A tight little red jacket rose up to his chin, with many pockets, and a pouch of nutfungus at the waist. He flexed his cheeks, pulling smoke out of the pipe. Rather than breathing the smoke in, he let it trickle up around his weathered face.

The Grulloo—he'd said his name was Jeroon—had a bit of a body that tapered out from the back of his head like a fish's, thinning down to a branching, sticklike tail. Much of his tail was buried deep in the heart of a thick old log with a red strip of nutfungus along one side. He cocked back his head and peered up imploringly with his pipe clenched between his square yellow teeth. His face was tight with pain.

“Poor Jeroon,” said Frek, his heart opening. He fluttered to the ground. It was a matter of minutes to fetch Jeroon's wedge and to pound it into the log with the little axe. Jeroon's wedge, axe, and knife were elegantly formed; they were the products of please plants cunningly tweaked to draw metal from the soil.

“Oh, that's good,” said Jeroon when his tail came free. Although his tail was camouflaged to resemble a branching stick, it was completely flexible. He set his pipe down on the ground and brought the tail around to his face, sniffing and licking at the injured spots. And then the pipe was back in his mouth and he was scrambling about on the split log, prying at the thick veins of shiny red nutfungus and stashing the pieces in his pouch.

Frek caught a whiff of the pipe smoke. He'd always wondered what tobacco smelled like. Sort of good. You couldn't get it in Middleville.

“Hist,” said Jeroon, suddenly looking upward. He ballooned his cheeks to draw the smoke from the pipe, turning his head from side to side, the smoke leaking out of his mouth and up around his nose. He slowly stalked all around the clearing, listening. He moved with a bow-legged rocking motion, tossing his tail from side to side to keep his balance. He was like a two-limbed toon tyrannosaur—but less than half a meter tall.

Now Frek, too, could hear what Jeroon was listening to. The whir of wings. A lifter beetle? No, this sounded different. More of a flapping sound.

“It's Okky,” whispered Jeroon. “We're for it, lad. Let's bolt!”

“Which way?” asked Frek, crouching down to face the Grulloo.

“Can you carry me?” asked Jeroon, hand-walking forward. He'd pocketed his wedge and his axe hung from a loop in the side of the coat.

“All right.”

“Friends for life,” said Jeroon, leaning far to one side and extending the hand at the end of his right leg. “I'll give you something wonderful when we get to my house. A boon.”

“Friends,” answered Frek, shaking Jeroon's hand. The Grulloo's grip was firm and strong, his skin hard and calloused.

Jeroon got his arms, or legs, around Frek's midsection and they lifted up into the air. The overburdened angelwings weren't liking this, they were chittering in dismay.

“That way,” said Jeroon, speaking around the pipe stem still clenched in his teeth. He was pointing with his tail, curved around to gesture in the direction they flew. The pipe smoke floated up into Frek's face, making him cough. Breathing tobacco was a different story from smelling it.

“Put out the pipe, Jeroon.”

“Not yet,” said the Grulloo, puffing out his cheeks so hard that the pipe bowl glowed bright orange. “We may need it against Okky.” The color made Frek think of the door in the UFO under his bed—which seemed like a lifetime ago. Frek worked his wings, staying ahead of the smoke.

They were above the tangled dark shapes of the Grulloo Woods, heading away from the river. This was wild, unknown country. Nobody ever came here. It was all Frek could do to avoid hitting the trees, but Jeroon seemed to know exactly where they were going. His arms aching with a wholly new level of fatigue, Frek followed the pointing of Jeroon's limber tail, dimly visible in the light from his pipe.

“Look out,” said the Grulloo suddenly. “Here she comes.” Nimble as a nightmare demon, Jeroon scrabbled up Frek's chest and hauled himself onto Frek's shoulders, his coarse hands digging into the nape of Frek's neck. The pouchy base of Jeroon's tail swept past Frek's face and wedged itself against the side of his head. From the corner of his eye, Frek could see that Jeroon had stuck one hand up high into the air, the hand clutching both his knife and his glowing pipe. Hard as it was to believe, Jeroon was also singing at the top of his lungs—bitter, joking verses about Grulloos, each chorus ending with the line, “So don't you call us freaks!”

There was a hooting sound followed by a whoosh of air laden with the smell of corruption. Jeroon's singing rose to a fierce shriek. Something thumped against Frek's back, crumpling one of his angelwings. The poor wing gave a dying insect chirp of alarm, then peeled off and fell away. Frantically Frek feathered the air with his remaining wing, sweeping it from side to side to break their fall as best he could. Jeroon seemed to be everywhere at once, on Frek's shoulders, at his waist, on the side of his leg, all the time singing his defiance of Okky, who swooped about them, pressing her attack.

They crashed into the top of an anyfruit tree, and as luck would have it, the impact snapped Frek's other wing, sending the ichor of its torn, dying body oozing down his side. Frek initially took it for his own blood. But then he realized that by some miracle he himself was unscathed. Thank you, Buddha.

Jeroon leaped off him and clambered onto a thick branch just overhead. His pipe and its coal were long gone, but he was still roaring out his song and stabbing his knife at the dark form that hooted and beat the air with stinking black wings. For a terrible, confused, instant Frek thought the shape was Gov in his raven form, somehow risen out of the wall skins to physically hunt him down. But it was Okky, and then the deathly beast had flown away.

“Your poor wings,” rasped Jeroon, nimbly dropping to a branch at his side. “Gaia bless 'em, they saved our lives. We'd never have gotten this far on foot. You're a good friend, Frek. I hope you're hale enough to push on? We're not safe yet. My burrow's just a bit farther.”

They climbed down the tree. Frek followed the sound of Jeroon's steps through some brush into the bed of a gurgling stream. They walked up the stream for a while, the banks getting higher on either side. Frek's feet grew wet and muddy. He felt thoroughly miserable. And by now he couldn't remember what he was doing here. There was nothing for it but to press on.

Finally Jeroon came to a stop and began fumbling at a spot on the bank. Frek heard the creak of a little door.

“Welcome to my home,” said Jeroon.

Frek reached out to feel the shape of entrance. It was a round hole, nicely framed in stone, less than a meter across. “I don't want to go in there,” he said. “I'll suffocate.”

“Oh it's roomier than you think,” said Jeroon. “Plush and airy, with a well-stocked larder. There's windows and a fireplace with a clean-drawing chimney. Don't be frightened, Frek.”

Jeroon disappeared into the burrow, but Frek stayed outside. A few minutes passed. Frek heard clatters, bumps, and crackling. A warm, flickering light appeared within. Peering through the open door, Frek could make out a low, arched hallway with its floor tiled in contrasting square and octagonal stones, nicely polished. The warm light came from a doorway in the right side of the hall. Jeroon peeked out of the lit door, and beckoned with his curled-around tail.

Frek heard a hooting not very far off. The memory of Okky's attack flashed back. He took a deep breath and crawled into Jeroon's burrow, slamming the round door behind him.

The hallway was gog tight, but once he'd wormed his way down the hall and through that lit-up door at the end, he found himself in a room nearly tall enough to stand in. He rose to a crouch and looked around.

The room had a smooth, redbrick floor and, wonder of wonders, a thick Turkish-style carpet, glowing with patterns of red, blue, and yellow. A cozy fire burned in a hearth on his left and, true to Jeroon's promise, the smoke was drawing nicely up into the flue. The arched ceiling curved down to merge with walls of hard-packed earth that were brightened by a coat of whitewash. Two barred, round windows were in the right wall, and one was propped open to let in the fresh, cool night air. A door on the far side of the room led to a kitchen, with a door beyond that leading to a bedchamber.

Jeroon had perched himself on a tall chair with two low arms and no back. His tail dangled behind him, so that his head seemed to sit alone upon the high chair's cushion like the dot of a letter “i.” He was sipping at a mug of something that smelled sweet and spicy. “My home is your home, Frek,” said Jeroon, clearly savoring the moment. “Have a seat over there, you'll be more comfortable. Take off your wet shoes. I'll be bringing you some food.”

Frek sat down on a square flat bolster in the corner between the hall door and the open window. For a moment Jeroon stared at him, grinning. And then the little Grulloo clambered down from his chair and ambled hand over hand into the kitchen, slowly beating his tail.

While Jeroon was gone, Frek looked around the room some more. There wasn't much furniture besides Jeroon's chair. Most of the floor was covered by the rich-colored carpet. A bowl beside the fireplace held a dozen little lumps of half-dried—were they meat? They looked too soft and greasy to be please plant seeds. Frek wondered if they were to be part of supper. He was quite hungry. He reached out to pick one up but, unsettlingly, it twitched at his touch. He left it in the bowl.