This is the first story that have written on this website. It's a fiction/fantasy story that will include mythological creatures such as witches and fairies, trolls and suchlike. At some point, it will include acts of sexual congress between characters of the same or different sexes. This is not a real life event, but it is only a storybook told from the point of view of the writer, me, who is also the Enchanter; hence the title "The Enchanter's Storybook".
Set in a medieval world, abundant with magic and fictitious creatures, this story is about Marcus Mallow and his ascent through the dark outer world of his hidden human village of Rocky Pass.
If you are lawfully restrained or below the legal age of whichever country you are in to be reading this, please leave. Thank you.
Finally, if you are wanting to understand the plot, I urge you to read previous chapters. You wouldn't start a book by reading the eighth chapter, so don't start this series reading the eighth chapter.
Now to start the eighth chapter of the tale.
The Enchanter's Storybook: Chapter Eight:
The blushing purple sky turned to a sickly dark blue before Marcus felt sleepy. It came to him like a spark of lightning, and it felt like a heavy burden pressing harder against his shoulders the longer he carried it with him. But he pressed on through the maudeness of the Maude Meadows, scurrying through grasses of blood red and autumn orange, bushes with crisp leaves and trees with drooping branches that seemed to reach out and grab him while he wasn't looking.
He didn't notice, but his stomach was growling horribly loud. He hadn't eaten that day, and had no water. His tongue wasn't unbearably dry, but he could still feel it there, irking him. How he had wished Varia had offered him a morning meal that morn, or at least a drink of her waterskin. But they had been off with the wind all too suddenly, and now he was starved and quenched, surrounded by a vast and unending redness that seemed to blush even under the darkness of the night sky.
Marcus usually found comfort in the glistening stars or the ominous glow of the moon, or at least the distant howl of nightwolves and the chirping of crickets, but none of that seemed to be this night. As far as he could see, the moon did not brighten in the midnight sky, and somehow the stars were hidden behind a sheath of grey and damnable clouds. He suspected it would rain, but it never did. Of what he could hear, the nightwolves weren't beings to exist in the Maude Meadows, as their howls somehow desisted the moment they left the marshlands. The same could be said for crickets and birds, any signs of life. Everything but the wind seemed to have died with the sun when it sank below the horizon.
"Darius!" he called out again and again, over and over, for the thousandth time that night. By then, he expected no reply but the wind. Yet still he called, repeatedly, never stopping or fading, simply shouting. Where was he? He asked himself over and over. Why did he leave me? Why, why why?
Oft a time he would call "Varia!" instead, finally facing the fact that Darius had abandoned him and Varia had lost him. He was alone, in the misty darkness of red, and all he wanted was his friend.
Yet he forced himself not to cry. Shedding tears was useless, he told himself. It was childish, it was foolish, and he wouldn't do it. He wouldn't lower to such folly.
"Darius, you bloody little bastard!" he shouted out. "Fuck you! Fuck all of you! Varia, Darius, Kryt, Myrdok, Mother, Father, Granny Elisai! Fuck the lot of you!" he screamed up to the sky. He dropped to the floor and grasped blades of red grass and pulled as much as he could from the floor, ripping it away and throwing it in the wind, pulling and tearing until the mud stained his hands.
He turned over on the hard, red, cold floor of the Maude Meadows and drifted into some state of worried sleep. The weight on his eyelids was just so unbearable that he was asleep as soon as they fell.
His dream was blackness. Blackness that fizzed and dripped like ink, that created ripples and waves like the sea. Eventually, it blew away to show the Maude Meadows. He was a bird, a tourmaline falcon, gliding through the dark midnight sky. Through grey clouds and hidden stars, he flew. He zoomed away from the meadows, he passed through the marshlands and boglands, he flew over the hills and the enchanted forests, through the Sunstretch desert and over the mountains of Rock and Stone. Overhead came the tiny speck of a village built in the between of two of the tallest mountains in the world. With the sky so dark and the stars so hidden, the sleeping village of Rocky Pass was hard to see, but it was still there, outlined with speckles of candlelight and the glow of the surrounding fireflies.
The falcon bird drifted down further and landed onto an old tiled roof, looking down onto Marcus's own land at the rear of his little beige house. It was his mother's pride garden, the most perfect garden in the Pass. His mother always prided herself in her garden, probably more than Marcus himself. Although, something about his mother's garden was wrong. The grass, however green, was bushy and overgrown. Wildflowers and weeds had blossomed, odd stacks of fallen tree leaves scattered the land. And in the center of it all, his mother sat on the plain hard floor, crying.
"Mother, Marcus has been gone a month, an that Darius too. They have perished," said his mother, curdled up beside the golden rose bush they had planted together last summer. It seemed the only thing tamed in her garden, the only thing that remained perfect. He knew his mother, he knew she would keep the bush alive as some hope that he was.
Granny Elisai stumped from the shadows under a withering willow tree and approached her, apprehensively. "No! No, you listen to me, Johan, he is out there. I can feel it in my bones. I care not what you say, dear daughter. He is alive."
"How do you know, Mother? I lost my last-born boy when he climbed that awful Mount Skull. Why? Why would I let him go? He wants to see the dragon bones, he told me. Jecker took him when he was younger, he was so good with him. Now I've lost them both!"
"Marcus is different, Jo. I know he is. He is nothing like his putrid father. He's out there, and I will find him. Darius was with him, too. They're great friends, they'll look after each other. I tell you now, Johan, I am an Elder of the Pass of Rock and Stone, and I will cross into the forbidden lands and bring him back to us," Granny Elisai declared.
Marcus's Mother, Johan, looked up at her mother with teary eyes of disbelief. "But Mother, you are a frayed old woman. Look at you. You are not capable of the journey into that world," his mother said, reaching out to touch Granny Elisai's hand. The old woman retracted and adjusted the blue rose in her grayed lilac hair.
"I have made the journey before, and I shall do so again. I know the way: through the mountains of Rock and Stone, the desert of the Sunstretch, the enchanted forests, and the lands of hill and bog and marsh; once I have passed through the Maude Meadows, I will travel across the Great Maude Lake. At the other end of the lake begins the Trollsturf - troll country. If I have to burn the troll country to cinders to find him, I will, child. I will find him, Jo, I will. Just you see, just everyone see!" the lilac-haired, wrinkle-skinned old woman decreed, pulling her daughter off of the grass by her wrist and pushing her back into the beige-bricked building. He remembered so many things from that house, but he knew he would never go back. His forceful Granny Elisai would never find him, she would forget him. His mother would too, and he had no certain father to speak of but the deceased Jecker that he could not seem to remember.
Marcus saw his mother was a mess. Her blue eyes were watery and crying, her blonde hair was untamed and messy. To be true, Marcus was the image of his mother, even though he could not remember his father. She was beautiful, so was he. It was said that his father was handsome, but had black hair and grey eyes, his mother had told. He had none of that, not a single resemblance to his father. He was his mother's son. Even so, he could not return. He would not.
"I promise you I will bring him back to us. I will leave at daybreak."
The darkness dribbled back over the world like blood leaking from an open throat, and before he could stop it, he was in the dark again. Lying on red grass and surrounded by copper flowers and autumn trees, he returned to the world of the Maude Meadow in seconds.
"What on earth...," he asked himself, though he couldn't configure an answer. He was simply confounded. Perhaps it was just a dream, a regular dream. But no, he knew, deep down, that it was not. What he saw was... somehow... real, happening at this very moment in time.
He rose to the floor once again, somehow refueled. It was still night, yet the sky was as black as it could be. "It's always darkest before dawn," he muttered to the darkness. "Dawn is coming." He wasn't speaking directly to anyone, but he still spoke.
Scouting north once more, he headed for nowhere in particular. He called a name now and then, but only the wind replied. North, he walked. He forced his foot in front of the other, each time, going north. Turning south meant going home, and Darius knew that. So why would he go north if he wanted to go home? It made no sense.
Then he remembered his Granny Elisai. After the hills came the lands of bog and marsh. They had crossed that while searching for the boy, and entered the Maude Meadows. But what came after it? The Great Maude Lake! If he found that, the Trollsturf would be on the other side. Perhaps he just wandered there. Or maybe he did die. It was the night before that he left. He had to cross marshlands in the dark, and Marcus could hardly get through in the day. Perhaps he perished there. Even if he hadn't, the nightwolves might have gotten him, or a lone troll. Perhaps he did make it to the Maude Meadows, and maybe he made it to the Great Maude Lake. What if he drowned there? What if he crossed, only to be killed by the trolls in the village Varia spoke of on the other side?
He couldn't be sure. But they roamed the marshlands with no sign of Darius, and so far they had not found him in the Maude Meadows, so the Great Maude Lake was his only option. So, yes, the boy went north; to the Great Maude Lake, he was destined.
MEANWHILE, Varia overlooked the greatness of the Great Maude Lake. The witch had made it there an hour or so before. She knew the land well from her journey south, towards Rocky Pass, and it seemed no different on her journey north, away from Rocky Pass. The lake still shone with the hued reflection of the sky; it still stretched as far west as she could see, and as far east as east goes, spreading its despicable red water throughout the Trollsturf.
The water glimmered under the empty black sky, sending small effervescent waves onto the red grass of the shore. The water itself was disgusting, and highly poisonous when ingested. That made it impossible to swim across, it was true. And so many had tried. Yet the poison found its way inside its victim and paralyzed the poor fuckers from head to toe. They would sink to the bottom, where the alligators would tear open the live flesh. And that only made the lake redder.
Varia tousled her deep red hair over her shoulders, running her fingers through it simply. That morning's sleep had messed it horribly, she could tell. She reached for the opening of her black leather bodysuit and fervidly released her plump breasts from it. There, she rummaged into her black leather undergarments, into her cleavage, and pulled out a hairbrush. She heaved it through her hair with ferocity, until it bowed to submission, as all her previous suitors had done. She pulled a handmirror from the secret place, too, to make sure she was truly beautiful. As always, she found her face flawless, and made note of that too.
"I will look this beautiful forever," she whispered. "Forever..."
She squeezed the oddities back into her secret place, before tightening back up the bodysuit and hiding away her undergarments.
The witch sighed and screamed the name again. The idiot boy! she thought. Making a woman as beautiful as her scour the red meadow for her! How foolish, she thought.
"Darius! Oh, when I get my bloody hands on you, I swear to the gods above I will rip out your throat and eat it!" she cursed, only to have the petulant wind to reply to her.
She ambled sexily down the red hill she lay atop of, and edged onto the side of the Great Maude Lake. She bent over and sniffed the foul water. It smelled of poppies and roses, everything sweet and perfect. If the boy came here, his blood would be spreading through the waters right this moment, she thought to herself.
She ran her fingers through the water and rubbed it across her palm. Bringing her hand towards her nose, she smelled in deeper. If he had drowned, she would sense his blood, yet she didn't.
"He's a clever one," she remarked. "Well, cleverer than most of the idiots that come to the Great Maude Lake."
She squatted down on the shoreline of the lake and sparked an admirable blue fire. Perhaps he might see it, out there, wherever he is, she thought. But she couldn't be sure. The idiot boy had gone north, that much was certain. She caught his scent in the hills, but had lost it in the marshlands, only to catch it again in the meadows. He was here, or at least he had crossed here.
She lay down on the shore of the lake and drifted to sleep, uncertain of Darius or Marcus. They were both stupid, she thought. Darius was too brave to keep his mouth shut and Marcus was so gullible he'd step into the mouth of a dragon if it asked him politely enough.
Varia dreamed of darkness, as witches always did. They were incapable of dreams. The darkness did nothing but lay still. Yet eventually, it began to grow lighter...
"Varia?" Marcus asked, poking her in the stomach. "Varia?" he asked again, shaking her as she slept on the shores of the awfully red lake.
"What? What?"
"You didn't find him, then," he anounced sullenly.
"Nor did you, or so it seems," she replied, sitting up beside the smoky remains of her pitiful fire. "But you found your way to lake."
"Where could he be, Varia?"
"What I have to tell you will not be enlightening, I assure you," Varia warned, pulling the boy to sit beside her. "I could smell Darius the entire time. We witches have higher senses than mankind. It is true, he went north. I lost his scent in the marshlands, because of all of the mud and nightwolves. I presumed him dead, until I smelled him again in the Maude Meadows, after we had separated. I followed the scent here, where it ended."
"You mean...," Marcus mumbled. "He drowned?"
"Oh, no, no, sweetling! By smelling the water, I could tell he hadn't touched it. But it ends on the shores. Somehow, he crossed, and I do not think he crossed alone. Look, on the other side, I see a rowboat. That is probably how he crossed."
She hadn't seen it at night, but in the daylight it was quite visible at the northern front of the Great Maude Lake. A small wooden rowboat, large enough to fit three or four trolls, or at least six humans.
"How will we get it across?"
"Easily!" she stated, standing to the ground and closing her eyes. She faced the lake. Raising her arms, Varia tainted her essence into the wind, forced it to her command. She pulled her arms out in front of her, and clenched her fists. To Marcus, it seemed like she was pulling a rope. Then she drew her hands back in, and the boat shook on the farther side of the lake.
A brown snake shot up out of the water and landed into Varia's welcome hands. She tugged on the rope fiercely, dragging the boat closer, until it washed ashore beside them.
"Climb in," she ordered, pushing the boat back into the water. Before it drifted off, she hopped into it too, and it rowed of its own accord to the other side of the lake.
Immediately, she could smell the boy on the boat. He had crossed. But he was not alone. The scent had been masked by sorcery, yet she knew he was not alone.
"Will he be in the village?" Marcus asked.
"Hopefully."
Closes the Enchanter's Storybook
That was The Enchanter's Storybook: Chapter Eight. Thank you for reading, it means a lot to me. Donate to Nifty. Places Storybook onto the coffee table, and raises a mug of sugary British tea, sips, and sighs
And remember: this very email address can be used to message me about our ideas, plots, comments - anything you have to say on this story, just email me. Even questions, if the need be.
Have an enchanting evening, my cauliflowers. Love, your dear distant relative that sends you those hard toffees at Christmas, The Enchanter.