chapter 2

THE CROOK OF THE MOUNTAIN KING’S ELBOW

2.

 No don’t bother yourself getting up Lord...as if you ever would. Lay there like purple lichen for all I care.

But eh.

You is missing the Summer my lovely! The sun is being kind this year he is, not so much rain to speak of at all. Mark my words majesty, those as can remember will look back on his year as a warm shining golden tunnel of wanton ‘appiness they will. I tell you, an mark my words, there will be a proper crop of babies come spring, rutting like rabbits they are out in the fields, you can almost smell ‘em. Strong boys for your war band they’re making, big fit lads and beautiful daughters like as you might crown with bows. Now, not that it bothers me any, I mean, you do as you likes, far be it from me to tell an ‘ighness what to do, but you is missing it, all of it. Brown from the kisses of the sun the girls are, beautiful and horny as a rich uncle’s shortlist of potential wives. Sticky with lovely sin and dizzy drunk on long warm evenings watching the fireflys dance. They will sing about this season particular when I am dead and you are as old as your father. And you! Look at you! You can’t as even pull yourself out of your sweaty pit of a bed. It aint right master.

You.....now then.

You is up to something I reckons.  A plan, a plan you got of something or other, isn’t it eh? Nobody would stay in here unless it was a part of some, I dunno, some greater scheme of things, not that its seeming for a woodentop like me to think on it, but.... But will you take me with you highness? Eh? Me and my shit humble family? Sit at your right hand will I? Telling you stories? The devil in your ear? Just as you likes it.

  I hears your father worries about you he does. There’s telling around and abouts that you won’t see him none. Now you be careful as you don’t tell him about me is that clear? Last thing I needs is the attention of a great Lord bearing down upon me and mine. You will look after us won’t you? Like as you’d never forget your friends eh? On your side I’ll be in a whisper , coz you is up to something, aint yer? Or my name aint Everyman.

*

Eh?

*

Any road up

*

Now this ‘ere story as I am telling, this ‘ere story goes on it does and I hears you asked that I should as carry it on. Called for me you did rather than that saggy harpy bitch. Might not make you happy when it finishes though. Tis the story of Gods and lowly men. An’ lowly men tend not to fare so well when put up against Lords, kings and Gods. Tend to die we does, in bloody droves for things we aint meant to understand. Fodder to the likes of you we are, meat to fill sausage skins. Any road up. Here to tell a story I am and that’s what I shall do.

*

Now where was I?

*

Here or here abouts........

A month passed slow, like treacle off a fat mother’s spoon. Arvey laid there good as dead he did, breathing ankle shallow, but not moving an inch. Covered in moss he was, so as to hide him from Jimmy, who was want to walk at the lake’s edge in the blanket of night and taunt the lady, the lady who Arvey had seen in the water.

 Now she fiercely watched over Arvey, fed him shining golden fishes in his dreams she did, poured the stark cold crystal waters into his dead mouth and waited, for she knew he was far from lost, just enchanted.  During the day she would stroke his face and cry over him, begging him to wake. At night she would do her best to lure the stupid giant away from where Arvey’s body lay hidden, for fear the ugly brute would tread upon him and squash him into jam. Arvey gave no sign of life, no movement at all, not so much as a flinch. To the eye he looked like a bump of moss upon the lush ground, a bump of moss favoured by a solitary, mad as may butter bird that wouldn’t fly away.

 During that month Jimmy didn’t spot him once, although an inkling in his pebble hard brain told him that something was very much out of the ordinary. Jimmy could smell something, something so delicious, so different to the run of the mill of things, as it pulled him back to the same spot night after night, nostril twitching in suspicious anticipation. Feeling frustrated at his inability to spot what was wrinkling his nose, he would bellow and throw rocks,

SPALLOOOSH!

 , in the hope of hitting the naked ladyfish with the long green hair, but his sport always turned bad. She was far too fleet a target and could move through the water faster than rocks through the air, faster than a wayward arrow.  After an hour or so of sniffing around Jimmy would shout at her a while, then give up and stomp away down the mountain loosening boulders with his low tremulous moaning and violent sneezes. But! He would always return the following night, knuckles anxiously ploughing the earth in grooves where he stood. Jimmy would once upon a time only visit infrequently, once his courage was up, and he needed courage, for he had fallen in love with the green haired beauty living in the lake. Ah, but since Arvey’s arrival his visits had been every night. He would pace the side of the lake like a massive moth eaten caged bear he would. She in her turn would worry as Jimmy paced and screamed, worried that Arvey would stir and draw attention to himself, then she would be powerless and Jimmy would snuff out Arvey’s life in a second with one stamp of a lonely monolithic foot.

The time as passed slowly like the last blip, plip, plop, drips of spring, until Arvey sensed the tiniest pimple of light in the regretful, panting, fat lazy black dog emptiness that the potion had mummified him in. It started as a lightening of the shadow it did, glowing at the side of his vision and grew like the onset of a slow honey drip dawn, lighter and lighter it blushed until his brain twinkled like frost and began to modestly sparkle and thaw. It’s difficult to describe how he felt, after all he had been asleep for a whole month, and when the blood in Arvey’s body began to move, every bit of him screamed with the imposition of it all.  He had been all but dead, bits of his body had been cottoned on by the spell that they were little better than stone. The journey he took before he could as much as move a finger took three days. He began to feel the cold, began to feel more hungry than he had ever felt, a hunger that chewed on his bones, pulled his soul into a tiny cupboard hidden in the very pit of his stomach,  screaming like a baby. His brain raced as though every tentative new heartbeat blew thoughts around his head like a tempest, all chaos and flashing pictures. He thought of Jimmy, of Elaine his step mother, of the words she had said that had been twisted into an evil septic barb. Arvey thought of the face that had looked up at him from the water, the most beautiful thing he had ever seen in his life, and how concerned she had seemed, concerned about him. Her eyes were so much more than lovely, but she had been a dream surely, just a dream, a dream, a dream.

Arvey awoke like the thawing of an ice castle. Bit by bit by bit the curse melted away.

The first thing the lady knew, the thing that made her realise that something was ever so very up was Mr Bird. Making an awful din he was and pecking at the moss that covered Arvey. She noticed that his body was only just about moving, twitch followed twitch on his way to waking up, as though emerging from hibernation all hazey and stiff. Arvey had been coming around for three days by now, his brain was working almost perfectly, but his body would still not answer its bidding, dead it was, like a forgotten puppet. She looked up at the sky, evening was beginning to draw in. Jimmy would be here within a handful of hours and unless Arvey could be awoken or moved the giant would spot him easily and crush him in a moment.  She would have to do something to draw Jimmy away, but he would smell him surely. The sun set and filled the world with molten gold and deep warm shadows. Arvey did not so much as stir, but she was worried she was, afeared  what chaos the night would bring. She would have to lie, that would be the only thing she could do, lie to the giant, sing to him. Drag his attention so far from Arvey for as long as possible, that even if Arvey were to sit up then Jimmy wouldn’t notice.

Night crept slowly over the mountain like sullen guilt and the lady waited. Waited for the sound of Jimmy’s distant but inevitable approach. She sat herself upon one of the rocks that broke the surface in the centre of the lake and combed her long emeral hair. Made herself all lovely like, tasty like a birthday cake, but with half an eye upon where Arvey still lay, occasionally twitching as his body reluctantly came back to life. The night was as warm as the evening. Even though the lake was towards the top of his lordship the mountain, the air hung as though it were heavier than usual and the dusky  insects seemed to be dancing to its torpid tune in a silver moonlit festival of their own making. All was quiet until the first distant footfall resounded through the air with a 

dull.......damp.....thud.

 He was coming. She looked at Arvey who was blessedly still. The crashes of Jimmy’s feet grew ever closer. Mr bird hopped from one foot to the other as if he knew how tense the hours would grow, how far from the sanctuary of dawn they were. The lady thought of what she had to do, and the danger that the more she drew Jimmy’s attention away from Arvey then the longer he would be likely to stay. Nothing moved saved the giant’s approach, the night hung like a heavy silver velvet curtain awaiting the onset of the show.

Then all at once he was there, ugly as regret and as loud as chaos. Howling his greeting with a pitiful ignorance he pounded his fists into the earth and shook the mountain to it’s foundations. He screamed of how lost a soul he was and how far from grace he had fallen, lamenting his ill made clumsiness. Jimmy wailed a symphony of ugliness, of solitude and bitter anger.  The lady closed her eyes, thought of Arvey’s vulnerable body, took one fathoms deep, long hopeful breath and began to sing as like nothing that had ever been heard. Her song began quietly it did. It told of distant oceans, of enormous skies, great black storms, of flying with the shimmering silver fishes. It told of yearning, of eternal hope and desperation. It filled the natural bowl with which the mountain had surrounded the lake like a tempest. The lady’s song swelled like the sea, crashed like waves against the white chalk cliffs of her beloved coast where the mountain’s kingdom met with her own. Jimmy stood astounded, heartbroken, smitten, carried away by the melancholy of her voice. She sang for hours, her voice trying to explain, as though Jimmy could understand her thoughts, as though Jimmy could share her pain. He stood slack jawed, his feet rooted, borne away like driftwood upon the massive swollen tide of her voice. He had never heard anything so beautiful. She sang forever, and he listened and gawped, time standing statue still, as though he had never used his eyes or ears before, astounded like the quarter baked in the presence of ultimate beauty. The lady sang and sang, her voice lifted from the lake to the ear of the very mountain itself. Just as she began to wonder how she could possibly keep the giant enthralled until dawn, the clouds began to gather around the summit above her. Black they were, black and mischievous. Thunder began a violent lowly growl. Jimmy looked up at the sky and wailed like one hundred wolves, shaking his fists at the appalling sky. The thunder seemed to answer. Jimmy howled again in defiance. The thunder turned to white whip crack lightning which flashed around the lakes edge. The air filled with electricity, the sky turned to white angry fire and blasted diamond fingers of fury at the giants feet. Jimmy shrieked back, but retreated, sullen like, from the lake with reluctance in defeat. The lady tossed back her emerald hair and laughed like one hundred tiny bells realising that she had cooked up an argument between Jimmy and the mountain. There could only be one winner. Jimmy crashed angrily down the mountain like a spoilt child bawling as he descended.

 Then, at last he had gone, the thunder abated and the lake was left in peace as the first rumours of dawn began to peep from the far east. 

The night was dead.

 She had won.