Fairy Glen Finds The 8th Ocean
Vegetation moves, a disgustingly messy moss, mound of broccoli.
E Coli deliverer, other worldly. Unsightly.
Children run away and screech like banshees, behold the forest of ascension. Where god does lie in the fertile soil. The many other powers that be detract their gaze, as the black and brown mould slowly rolls into mountains.
This horrible land can never be named. Unblessed, failed abortion, miscarriage.
That which grows does so from death.
Nothing of any value, other than potion ingredients in the green eyes of a tattered old witch.
Areeva Betty
Shadow tormentor
Guardian of the groves
I am weak at the elbows for the cutting to begin, watching her drift across marshes.
The hooded soul of another, once breathing.
Stale air, I dare not tread, dragging myself like a snake, I melt through puddles to stalk an apparition. Autumn’s aura. The eye of a storm, the black hole’s horizon.
I seek the 8th ocean, the last of a god’s tears, a sacred pond. What dramatic events throughout history did unfold, here nobody can quite recall.
Wet earth and damp sky. With her leaks liquid, like skates on thin ice of a winter passed.
‘Sluuurrp’
Gagging
‘Cough - cough, fuck pot! Cough! Oh snickerdoodles’
I was too close, too eager for the illusive prize. Choking on muddy water like a baby in a shallow bath. Areeva Betty notices - stopping and visually descending a couple of inches under her cloak. I have heard tales and seen shadows, but this was my first experience with the golem in both of her physical forms. She turns around in a fast, rigid motion like an overly animated corpse, her head tilted and eyes bulging, she peers down at me like I’m a little morsel.
‘EEEeeehhh hello there limbless man! Why do you slide on the ground like one of my slug snackies? HHMMMmmm?’
Her voice is like a violent accordion, possessed by an ancient water witch.
‘Uhh, cough-spit, ahem, good day to you my beautiful enchantress, I am sorry for my current floor dwelling - umm - improper position that you have found me in. I did not notice you so nearby as my face was full of dark muck and reeds.’
‘MMmmmm flirtatious woorrds fairy charmerr, I liiike that, but I did heeear the slippery steps of a serrrpent, and even more so, the wheeeezing of a weak old boyyy, faaaAAAaarr from his homeland hEhE! I know that you have knowledge of who I am so you best be telling me why you intend to sneeeak on a woman alone in the wooods or I will make you the final flavour of me frogspawn stewww AhAh.’
Her creaky limb and head movements are like twigs snapping. I pick myself up from the mud and onto my feet, I am surprised that she stands a little shorter than I, for I am by no means a tall man, and with the view that I had from the ground, she was rather frightening and ghastly.
‘Alrighty then, please forgive my sly ways Areeva Betty, from this point onwards I will be nothing but infinitely honest with you. My name is Fairy Glen but I am sure that you knew this already. I am a traveller from worlds away, a seeker of life’s mysteries, and what I want from you is to learn the secrets of the 8th Ocean. That is if it truly exists of course.’
Her green and yellow eyes changed like a manic horse, the way they do before being broken in by the patient rider.
‘The 8th Ocean!? HA! HEheHehEE! Tis true as fish with fins! I will show ye fairy pants, as I do with all honest men, but there is a great river which yeE must follow with caution, for couuntless brave boys have failed in their quests as III’ve watched them fall into the wild waters belowww. Eeeehehe.’
‘Whatever it takes, I am ready my dear Betty boo.’
She blushes disgustingly as she blind folds me with a wet eel and leads me along the treacherous path that my ancestors christened with their limbless bodies, away they did float, downstream, tumbling into ravines like tangerines in orbit. In the recesses of my mind I hear their heads cracking and splashing savagely, like soaked sponges and brittle green quartz, slapping against the multiple shaped surfaces of suffering. I sweat as the beast giggles ahead of me, I can feel the warts on her knuckles. I have a recipe to fix such things but I’m sure that she would decline and state something ludicrous in response about fresh tree bark or the lingering kisses of pink-cheeked pirates.
I estimate it to be about 13 hours that we have been walking, as the eel blindfold became even darker than it was when we began, and I feel thirstier than a yellow tip mushroom in summer. Her cackling and prancing began to wear on me within the first hour, by now I am ready to open throats with my pocket sword. My head is dizzy, tipsy like a night of blood eggs with Dragunov, the dehydration and pain in my left leg is all I can focus on to stay awake.
Finally Areeva’s grip on my hand softens as her pull slacks, allowing my dislocated shoulder to realign.
‘Step yer feetsies into me ocean fairy boy! But do not let it swallow youuu! Allow the heealing waterrs to cleanse the miles trapped betweeen ye toooes!’
I can feel the moist ground as I shuffle hesitantly. She urges me closer, further into the water. The cold liquid laps around my forefoot and I feel a sense of fear, shock.
‘I do not wish to drown today Betty, can you promise my safety? Despite my active mouth I cannot breathe, nor form any speech underwater.’
‘Shut yer sound clam leeettle Glen.’
She rips off the now rotten eel from my eyes, yanking my head forwards which causes me to suffer a vicious whiplash, the likes of which are incomparable to what I’ve experienced with Dragunov during our old carriage crashing days.
Gasp!
Wow! The aura of an autumn sunset! What wonderful colours I see, splashed across a vast ocean, a perfect horizon of fresh salt... Salt? A luminous hand slowly materialises in front of my face, and in it an object - one of my bora salt stones from the Galewis Flats.
‘Mr Glen? You had a weee sleeeepyy so III took the libertyy of rummaging through yer rucksack, thought this might wake yee up I did!’
‘Brilliant idea my beautiful saviour, but that stone has hallucinative properties I must say, be careful not to lick your fingers after touching it won’t you?’
I notice now, there is no everwide 8th Ocean, I stand alone with a madwoman, among a clearing of tall twillen trees, my bare, dirty feet, tasting the dissatisfying edges of a very small and dirty pond, a large puddle even.
‘HEHEEEHEEHE!! Arrivederci twinkly toeesss!’
The golem bounces high like a springbok and perfectly pin drops into the centre of the puddle with the grace of an olympic springboard diver, laughing like a wild crisch owl, known for their frightful squawk of course. Surely it could not have been more than half a metre deep at best, but she disappears as if it were Dairy Poppins’ void bag. My curiosity takes over as I lean forward, stepping carefully to peer into the dark water. There is nothing, it is too mucky and although the moon is full, it is not enough to pierce the shield of these tall trees, and the murk of the water itself. I feel tranced somehow by it all, perhaps it is the absence of that obscene character or the starvation and dehydration that my body has been fighting, whatever it is I drift into the water face first, bowing like an overly eager taekwondo student.
SPLASH! Blob, blob.
I lost my footing and fell in like a baby with no floaties, thrashing about sickly. I open my eyes, in awe I scan my underwater surroundings: there is light down here, it looks almost the same as the waters of the arctic do when the sky is clear and strong, under a vast sheet of ice it can be possible for the sky to shine through it. Though it is a powerful emerald green glow in the water here, emanating through the roof, but I can only see one small hole, the one that I came from. What is the source of this shine?
The 8th Ocean is real.
A little further down I see the dark shape of a ghostly ship, moving quickly through the depths, and the violent scream of a mad pirate, like a bad dream.