The International Writers Magazine: Dreamscapes Fiction about monsters in the woods...

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Spire • Brodie Parker It had come and burned and killed many brimfolk... Among the shining steeples of the kingdom of men, a jumper, as they are called, makes purposeful strides through a crowded market place. The jumpers used to populate a vast plateau south of the Brimwood Forest that separated them from the kingdom of men deep in the mountains.

Then the nameless curse came down from the east, across the Blood River; the jumpers never stood a chance. The invasion flattened the terrain into an arid steppe which would no longer support life. Those who survived fled south to the coast where deep caves afforded them shelter. Many years passed before they ventured north across the waste that was their homeland to the kingdom of men. Their contact was still minimalist, and trade was difficult to maintain with the ordeal of crossing the steppe. There was only one who would frequent the hazards of the journey often enough to be know among all men. Spirellen Limbdew of the Brotherhood of Wind, who was known as Spire to all the kingdom of men was on an errand to serve Queen Miriam. The men and women he passed in the market all stopped to wave and say good morning. The children all gathered around him in a throng of toothless smiles and hands reaching out to touch his loosely fitting clothing. At the edge of the market place where the huge iron wrought double doors stood open with two armored guards standing sentry, the children all stopped short and waved goodbye to him in a large group. He turned and smiled and tipped his wide brimmed hat, then continued unhindered past the smiling guards.

Inside the palace, rushing servants and courtiers all smiled and greeted him. They all knew Spire and the stories of his adventures. Jumpers are extremely long lived. They don’t reach maturity for nearly two centuries after they’re born. The oldest of the jumpers was nearly one thousand years old. In the old days when they lived on the plateau, they were said to live much longer. Jumpers get their name from their uncanny ability to leap huge distances and heights. Their legs are designed for this purpose; the muscles are huge, and the joints have durable organic padding for the impact of landing from a jump of over seventy feet. Their knees are double jointed, one hinge, one ball and socket, which allow them to shift their center of gravity to accommodate the desired height or distance of their jumps. The sight of the jumpers’ legs causes men to stare unbelieving, which greatly annoys Spire. He hides his long limbs under a thick cloak while among them. His height of just over seven feet made him easily identifiable to everyone he passed. The long staff he carried with him clacked rhythmically against the floor in time with his long gait. He came to a courtyard which opened upward to an unspeakably high ceiling. Many large trees stretched upward in wide intervals in even rows. Their thick branches hung out to brush against open hallways, alive with servants attending to chores. Spire gripped his staff near the center, and shifted his knees to more effectively utilize the muscles in his thighs, and to orient his center of gravity to a more vertical jump. His legs propelled him upward with remarkable speed. His feet gripped a branch with an opposable digit, and his shifted his knees back to tense the muscles in his calves, and move his center toward a linear jump into a hall five stories above the floor.

Familiar faces surround him on all sides, greeting and smiling and welcoming him. He quickly but politely makes his way toward a room he knows very well. Queen Miriam had the room designed and decorated in the style and tradition of the old jumper home. She had known him since birth and he had served her all her life, as he had served her mother before her. She was always granting him special favors and showering him with frivolous courtesies. Spire was no less fond of her. Of all the people in the kingdom of men he had ever known, he favored Queen Miriam above all. Spire was the representative of his people in her kingdom, the only contact point between the two cultures. It had been this way for years. The folk of Brimwood passed what goods were traded further south, and accepted what came north from the jumpers. The brimfolk, as they are called by men, are more like men than the jumpers, but only in that their legs are alike. Their customs and manners are as foreign to those of men as are the jumpers’. Their wide set eyes and enlarged ears are their most distinguishing features, and their stubbornness is legendary. It makes them more difficult to barter with sometimes, but it also makes them more predictable, more reliable. Spire had spent time among the brimfolk as well, but in his opinion, men were more amusing.

He knew why she had called him there before he started north. The Brimwood had seen a monster come from the mountains in the west, near the ocean. It had come and burned and killed many brimfolk. Their best hunters had chased after it, never to return. He had feared as much when the brimfolk elected the group in council, for which he was present, and during which he advised them to scout it’s lair first. Fighting the creature in its home put them at a disadvantage. He tried to warn them, but the fools wouldn’t listen; and now their best were dead. He was already preparing for the journey when he received her summons. He would not suffer the beast to live.

She rose quickly, and rushed to embrace him when he entered the room. He encircled her with his long arms. He ran slender fingers through the thick brown curls flowing from under a simple, understated crown of woven ivy. They spoke for a while about little things; the things he enjoyed so much about men and the Brimwood and the mountain home of men, and the things he enjoyed about her. They exchanged deep gazes and made furtive gestures, but always under the watchful eye of the courtiers. They were never far, and always watching. At length, she came to the question of what was to be done about the Brimwood beast. He took her charge, naturally, and with her blessing left the palace westward toward the sea.

Over several days he crossed crags and thick patches of uninhabited Brimwood, following the trail of the beast. By its tracks he guessed it to be about twenty five feet long. It’s weight, it followed, was too terrible to calculate. The stride was large, and a thick tail dug grooves in vegetation and gravel in places where it passed through. The claws left prints which resembled that of a large cat, or possibly a bear, but Spire had never encountered such as creature as the one which left those tracks. Long ago, he heard a bard in the Brimwood sing a song about an evil from old days laying dormant in the west above the sea. He recalled that song, and began to hum it to himself. He searched the lyrics for a clue that he could link to the creature from what he knew from its tracks. Nothing stood out, so he put it out of his mind. He encountered the tracks of the warriors from Brimwood, and followed them into a ravine.

The tracks of man and beast lead him to a wide canyon enclosed by natural walls that rose up hundreds of feet on every side. Broken earth and stones of all sizes littered the canyon floor. He followed the trail along either side by jumping from boulder to boulder. He was as alert as he could manage while still keeping an eye on the trail. It wound through debris until a narrow pathway lead upward out of the canyon. The top of the path followed a wide ridge, from which Spire could see down to the ocean. A crisp wind picked up, and he pulled his cloak more tightly around him. He moved slowly along the ridge, following the tracks into a sparse forest. He stopped in a small clearing when the tracks stopped. He examined the ground carefully in every direction. There was nothing to indicate a battle, or a struggle of any kind. The tracks of both man and beast simply stopped. Spire’s blood froze in his veins as his mind made a reflexive connection learned from long experience. He closed his eye for a moment and listened. Far away, he could hear surf washing over rocks and sand. He could hear gulls faintly over the offshore wind. Then he caught, very briefly, a sound of breath being drawn. He immediately centered his focus on the origin of the sound, and fixed his eyes on a patch of growth twenty feet over head. There, the trees grew together into thick knots that blocked out the sky.

He remained completely still, and watched. Slowly, an image began to resolve itself in Spire’s eye from deep within the growth. He traced the length of the creature with his eyes, and let his gaze rest on the leaf green eyes which he felt sure must be, must have been studying him since he entered the clearing. He pictured the next move very clearly in his mind. He saw the exact position his hand would take on the staff, where he would aim his jump, the exact timing of the shift his knees would have to make for him to clear the height he needed. Then he moved. With blinding speed, his upper legs moved over his lower legs, then shot him upward as he grasped the staff near the end with his empty hand. A slight twist produced a crack along the circumference of the staff, and a section pulled away, followed by the sound of steel sliding against wood. With the sword in one hand, and the staff/scabbard in the other, he grasped a branch with his feet just ten feet across from the beast, and at an even height above the ground. He heard it snarl as its form began to move all at once into a crouch. Spire noticed how the outline of its body against the camouflage of the trees changed. There seemed to be spines protruding down the length of its back, and two wicked barbs on the end of its tail. It raised its pig-like snout, and gave a snort and a low growl just before they both moved. Spire had already moved his legs to jump outward in a low parabola across the distance. They met closer to where Spire jumped from, and it snapped at him with jagged teeth, barely missing his foot. Spire slashed downward with his sword, and with the scabbard, pushed against it’s hide to help guide himself to a better vantage point. He jumped twice more before the beast moved back toward him, bleeding from a small wound in its shoulder. It had four short, stubby legs with long claws on the ends. It’s head snaked out on an elongated neck. The face resembled a wild boar, except the snout was much less blunt, and the tusks were much longer.

Despite its bulk, it moved fluidly through the trees, propelling itself quickly and agilely toward him. He shifted his weight again, and waited calmly for the creature to close in. When it came close enough, Spire vaulted upward, climbing higher and higher, hoping it would pass under him, giving him another moment to plan a better attack. Instead, it quickly changed its course and followed him upward. At the top of his jump, he clasped the nearest tree with both feet, and readied himself to meet the beast’s attack. It came almost immediately. First one claw brushed past his head, narrowly missing him, then the other came in lower, snagging his cloak, and ripping large gashes in the cloth. He jumped quickly, letting go of the tree, and spinning around with the sword. It caught the beast just under the chin, and sank in deeply. A split second later, he completed his spin, and gripped the tree firmly with both feet once again. He called up something he had learned long ago, something passed down from jumper to jumper for as long as there were jumpers. From a time, even before the old jumper kingdom on the plateau. Something he kept deep inside, near his heart. It pulsed with his blood, and flowed through his arm and his hand into the sword. The blade flashed with a blinding light for the briefest of moments. A deafening shriek came from the beast before it twitched violently and dropped from the tree where it perched. It dropped so quickly that Spire didn’t have time to pull the blade free. It fell with the beast, and he shifted his knees once again before dropping in a controlled fall to the ground.

The beast was breathing shallowly, though not otherwise moving. He pulled the sword free in a quick, clean motion. He circled the beast once before moving to stand over its head. He could see it sneer and tense at his approach. It seemed to be struggling futilely, and he moved to end it’s suffering. As he brought the sword up over his head, the neck suddenly twisted to flop the head to face him. His eyes widened as a blast of flame issued from out of the beast’s wide nostrils. It flashed over him, singeing his eyebrows and knocking his hat off. He was on his back moments later when he regained his composure. The beast was pulling itself up. It seemed to have a broken leg, but it was steadying itself on three, and looking angrily at him. His sword had fallen from his grasp and lay just over a foot from his hand. The beast moved first, suddenly springing to life and lunging for his prone form. Spire rolled to the side, gripping his sword as he narrowly avoided being gored. He knelt down, and pushed up powerfully with his legs, gliding in a smooth back flip to the opposite edge of the clearing.

They faced each other for the briefest of moments before the final charge. The met with a flurry of steel and teeth. Spire had to go on the defensive from furious lashes of the long barbed tail. The snapping jaws nearly sliced into muscle, but merely grazed lightly into the skin when he pulled quickly away. Excited by the taste of blood, the beast began to redouble its attacks. Spire had to work furiously to dodge bursts of fire and claws. However, it also became more wild and sloppy with the blows. Spire saw an opening when it over extended a lunge, and leapt in an arc over the length of the creature’s body. As he landed, he brought the tip of the sword around in a deadly slash, catching the twisted tissue of the broken hind leg. The sword flashed once again as the limb dropped cleanly away, and the beast roared as dark blood erupted from the wound. It collapsed and began writhing violently. A barb on the tail caught Spire in the arm, opening a deep cut and making him drop the scabbard. He scrambled to the opposite end of the enraged creature, and quickly plunged the end of the sword deep into its neck. He gripped the hilt with both hands and closed his eyes. When he twisted the sword, a blinding flash of light filled the clearing, and shone through the woods for several seconds. When the light was gone, the beast was still. The sword came free easily.

Spire staggered back to catch his breath and to bandage his wounds. He decided he would make a necklace of the smaller spines for Miriam. The others, he would deliver to the families of the soldiers from Brimwood who died fighting the beast. He felt very satisfied, very accomplished having slain the beast.

He almost felt worthy of the praise heaped upon him by Miriam and her people. He started back toward the east before the sun set.

Behind him in the clearing, several pairs of eyes watched him leave. When they were quite sure he was gone, half a dozen creatures, a tenth of the size of the dead one came out of hiding in the growth to feed on the corpse of their mother. When they were finished, there were no remains. So nourished, they retreated into the darkness of their nest to sleep, and to grow, and to dream of a quick creature with a single flashing, deadly claw.

© Brodie Parker April 2004
CapFantastic77@aol.com
http://hometown.aol.com/capfantastic77/myhomepage/

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