Trails Of Mystery

ㅤ“The small town is one of the greatest creations of modern people”  –O’Mallrey, in A Reading Of The World

ㅤIn a small house, in a small town, in a small country of a small world, there lived a family, the Grenshaws. Their family had a pet like most families, a family farm like most families, and even a beautiful garden, like most families. However, something set the Grenshaws apart from the other families in Kilttown; that something was the odd way the children would go about their day. Instead of working the farm (like most young boys), Benneth went adventuring to learn more about the world he lived in. Instead of learning to cook (like most young girls), Moikra made frequent trips to the forest and took swims in the creeks. Their parents worked the family farm harder than most to allow their kids to learn and were happy to do so. The siblings kept all their findings in a thread-bound book so as to contribute to the explorative knowledge movement

ㅤ}–{To the story}–{

ㅤI gingerly cupped the bulb of the beautiful new plant. With my eye still on the plant, I called over my shoulder to Benneth.

ㅤ”Benny! Come here! Have you ever seen this plant before?” He took his eyes off his journal to look and raised his eyebrows curiously

ㅤ”Come here!” I called again, refocusing on the plant. The sound of shoes on grass heading toward my ears informed me of his decision.

ㅤIt really was a beautiful plant. Its bulb had flaky, red-brown skin, which complimented the yellow stalk growing out the bottom. It looked a bit like a small person who got really mad, with the yellowish leaves acting as arms coming out of the body-like stalk. Then and there I knew that I would name this plant after our neighbor, Mr. Frutle–his face always seems to be red.

ㅤBenneth crouched beside me, the plant coming up to his perching knees.

ㅤ”It looks like Korbute!” 

ㅤ”You’re right, It does. At least, a little bit,” Benny started drawing a crude sketch in his thread-bound book (not his journal) with a pencoal. He got that book as his 8th birthday gift (I got a whittling kit for my 8th birthday, but that’s not important) and continued to accumulate supplies to log information with it. We call it “The Living Book,” because someday we want to put everything that’s living into it! 

ㅤ”Hmmm… What should we name it?” Benneth wondered. “Korbulb!” came my immediate answer “–after our affectionate Korbute Frutle,”

ㅤ”But… The bulb looks like a fruit of some sort. What about Bute Fruit? Or maybe… no, that sounds dumb. Hrm, I guess we should go with Korbulb.” And so it was. He scribbled in the finishing touches and wrote the decided name above it. I stood up and trudged back through the leaves, vines, stalks, and spruits with Benneth close behind me, heading homeward due to Ba setting in the distance. Suddenly, something grabbed my attention.

ㅤFor just a moment, I thought I saw a shine, reflected from the dusk light of Ba’ar, like polished metal, or bubbles — just out of the periphery of my eye.

ㅤ”Keep going, I’ll be right there. I thought I saw something,” I called out to Benneth as I walked back to where I thought I saw something… Nothing, BUT that is exactly what made me curious! See, there had obviously been something there, but now all that proved its existence were the plants it had pushed to the side. It seemed like this wasn’t its first time, or that it had been there for a while, because several plants seemed dead, trampled over, and brown from the lack of sunlight.

ㅤLooking back toward town, I could almost see all of it from this vantage point! I could see Benneth walking head-raised, shoulders-set toward our house. Our house was on the outskirts of our town, nicknamed Fields of Plenty by the townsfolk because the real name is boring and doesn’t attract much attention (I heartily agree). I saw the path we took to the main square, swerving this way and that. I saw our town center, a beautiful, green community garden thriving on passerby’s water, and occasional new seed. The garden was surrounded by various shops, houses, and stores.

ㅤKnowing that I needed to return (both to see what had been there, and to enjoy the view), I found a long, purple stalk, stabbed it into the ground–making sure it wouldn’t fall by packing more dirt around the base–and walked away. That should mark this spot well enough. I think Benneth will like this mystery!

ㅤ}–{To Benneth}–{

ㅤMoikra had been bugging me about a spot of trampled plants. I have no such interest in exploring absolutely nothing, so I tried many times to explain to her that there are myriads of uninteresting animals that could have made this opening. It could be a Jerapnyd (though they rarely come this close to the town), or a Greyne, it could even be a temporary home for a Sneret! But no, despite all this evidence to the contrary, she insisted that it was worth investigating because she thought there was something shiny there.

ㅤI am positive it was a sleeping Greyne(They have gorgeous, shiny white feathers), but here I am, looking at exactly what I expected. Surrounded by grasses of green and maroon, a yellowed spot opened up.

ㅤ”So… help me figure out what I saw!” she said, turning to look at me. “Please?” 

ㅤ”Alright, alright,” I said, getting on my knees. Poking the ground and lifting leaves, I inspected the area as they do in mystery stories, hoping to find something like a feather, to prove that it was a Greyne.

ㅤSmelling the grass proved interesting: “It smells weird here. Like… metal or… blood”

ㅤShifting the grass around, my eyes confirmed what my brain was already thinking. Dark brown-red blood was left on the edges and underside of the grasses.

ㅤI shivered as the realization set in. This was meant to be a deathbed for some creature. She might have seen some predator dragging it away! But, following that logic, there should be a trail of blood where the corpse was dragged.

ㅤ”So,” went Moikra, “If the creature was bleeding, and thus dying… where did it go?”

ㅤ”My thoughts exactly. Maybe it wasn’t even dying! maybe something killed it! Or… I suppose it could have even just stank like death…” I started looking through the yellowed plants. I concluded my research with a “No that can’t be it.”

ㅤ”Well, what are we gonna do?” Moikra posed the question I had been wondering since we got here.

ㅤ”I don’t know, but whatever it was is dead now, right?”

ㅤ”I would guess so.”

ㅤHer face lit up with a wild-creature-idea, which I had seen before, and the ideas actually came true sometimes! This one though… probably not.”What if! WHAT IF this creature is supposed to be bleeding? Like sweat!” 

ㅤ”That is!… Well, I suppose that is possible…, but we have never seen or heard of anything like that.”

ㅤ”I know, but look–LOOK!” She whips her head around mid-sentence, and my confused eyes follow instinctively. A blur of movement meets them and disappears! Thoughts dashed through my head “What was it? Is it the same animal that made the spot? If so, why isn’t it dead? Is it the predator of the animal? Why did it run away? No other creature has run away that fast before…”

ㅤBefore I could ask Moikra any of these(not that she would know the answers either) she was running after the blur of motion in a vain effort to catch it.

ㅤ”Wait!” I sputtered and stood up, stumbling to keep up with the chase. They had already made it into the tree line once I regained my head and footing. Into the woods, we ran! Moikra’s ink-black hair danced beside her. I couldn’t see what she was chasing but knew I had to stay with her, if not the creature. She rounded a tree, and I followed fast. A little too fast.

ㅤSuddenly, my legs went out from under me, the ground was rushing up toward my head, and my vision went black.

ㅤ}–{To Moikra}–{

ㅤI couldn’t see it anymore. I saw plants moving out of the way, and a small path that it was following, but not the actual body, just where it had to be. I heard Benneth scrambling to keep up with us; our footfalls getting closer together, though they were catching up slowly (if that’s possible in a speedy situation like this).

ㅤI like chasing things, but most of the animals trust us so much that they usually just sit and wonder what we are doing. This creature is obviously different, which makes me want to catch it even more! My small glimpse of it showed it had a large round white orb on its back, and many long spindly legs. It’s a wonder that it can run this fast with such a heavy-looking body. 

ㅤRounding a tree and barely reacting fast enough to jump over a log that the creature skittered under, I realized that this creature is following a trail, not a large one, but a trail that it must have created! Why did it make this trail? Ducking under a particularly large leaf, I decided that I would figure that out soon enough if I kept the pace.

ㅤThe path steeped downhill as the forest thickened. The ground seemed to be so much more pebbly and rocky now. I am very thankful for my shoes, my feet would have been sliced and bleeding by now! Yikes.

ㅤThe skittering little form seemed to never slow! I was pretty athletic, but even I ran out of breath after a while! And that “while” was about now. Pumping my legs, I convinced myself that I could last another turn or two, but thank goodness that was when we reached our destination because I was truly exhausted.

ㅤBefore my huffing and puffing body lies a hill in the forest. Hill was an understatement, it was more like a cliff. It was rocky on the side facing me and topped with more grasses and vegetation hanging down as if they were reaching for the ground. Rock and dirt colored it with grays, reddish-browns, and even a couple of slashes of black mixed in. The trees around it covered it from most of Ba’s light, but a few bright rays slashed through the dampening leaves. 

ㅤI didn’t notice it until the still-scurrying creature weaved into it, but there was a crack in the cliff. A cave! How exciting! It wasn’t like the caves I had imagined, this one looked like somebody took a giant ax and slammed it into the cliffside, which created a big enough gash to walk through.

ㅤAll this I perceive in a couple of moments, along with the fact that Benneth is no longer behind me. I wonder what he is doing, but brush it off with an oh he is just slower than me. I don’t have enough time to make a smart decision, so I rush into the cave anyway because I need to see this creature, and I need to find out why it is running from me. For the Living Book!

ㅤThe cave entrance was small and sharp; I think I scraped my arms trying to fit in. It was also DARK. I realized that I had no idea what it was like underground! I guess I just always assumed there was light somehow streaming through the dirt and rock from Ba’ar. The entrance went down into the ground, still skinny– that is, until the small crack unnaturally widened into a dome, about the size of the meeting house back at Fields of Plenty. 

ㅤAt the other end of the cave, heaving was the little rascal I followed. “Nowhere to run now!” I muttered raspily. The critter turned, “face” illuminated by the streams of light coming in behind me. Oh, Great Gardener! On its back was a huge, shiny, wet, round, puffy eyeball. It had no eyelid and almost seemed to be simply set on its back. The eye seemed to ooze in the light, It looked at me from behind the creature’s… head? Stalk? On the “head” were 2 long protruding fangs, and many mismatched teeth: yellowed, square, sharp, ribbed, the works. The creature itself was a rotund thing, mostly a dark washed-out red(where there wasn’t an eyeball), with 6 segmented legs (3 on each side), and 2 more hanging out too high on the body to touch the cave floor. 

ㅤThis was a hideous malformed freak of nature. A disgusting doll is sewn together with the grim remains of other toys. This was something not of our beautiful world.

ㅤI wished I hadn’t been so stupid. I wished I hadn’t gone in without Benneth. I wished he was there to talk sense into me like he always does. I wished I had run when I realized what I was chasing. I wished for a thousand things, but wishing doesn’t change what happened that day.

ㅤ}–{To Benneth}–{

ㅤI stood back up, face dirty, head spinning, and I romped back off, following the path I knew Moikra had followed, gaining speed–determined to catch up to them. 

ㅤThat was a mistake because almost I fell again. I slipped on the gravelly path, trying to stop when I noticed the path ahead dipped down quite steeply. And before me was a cave that broke into an open rock face. Losing no time,I ran down the bluff and delved into the crack-cave, hoping it wasn’t too dark.

ㅤIt was. I walked in and was faced with a pitch-black, rocky path to walk through. A bit of light came through behind me, but I blocked most of it. The farther I walked, the harder it became to breathe. The darkness felt like it was choking me; the tight walls did not help. However, I pressed on knowing that I couldn’t let Moikra get in trouble or worse, hurt! 

ㅤThen I heard something dreadful. A scream rang out unlike anything I had ever heard, long, wailing, and pained. I had heard her cry before, as mom bandaged a gash caused by a particularly sharp rock, but this was something more, almost animal-like, like all the fear and pain we had ever experienced stuffed into one scream. I ran, FAST. Tearing through the rest of the crack into an open room.

ㅤMoikra was on the floor, unconscious (or worse!). Looming over her was the most hideous thing I have ever seen. What I saw was a lump of flesh with body parts as if they were stabbed into it at odd angles. Blood trickled from spot the legs where shoved in and also from a large gash in its side, a festering gash. Fueled by fear and love, I continued to run at the creature.

ㅤ”GET OFF MY SISTER!” I yelled. I landed a punch right in its lumpy, wet eyeball, hoping to throw it off-guard. The creature stumbled backward and fell over with a strange low squeal and tried to ease the pain with its legs. I forced my attention onto Moikra. I picked her up, and I ran as fast as one can run when holding their limp little sister inside a stone crack with a terrifying monster behind you.

ㅤI felt like I exploded out of the cave. Able to run a lot more freely–and breathe a lot more freely–I ran up the bluff and broke off from the path in another direction. I ran until I thought we were out of hearing range and set Moikra down. She was still breathing, but her right shoulder was bleeding quite a bit. 

ㅤIn a fit of medical inspiration, I took off my shirt and ripped the sleeves off at the seams, then I fit them around her own sleeve, which had 2 small holes in it (I realized later that the creature had bitten her there, but only the fangs of the creature had punctured her shirt–no other teeth). The extra sleeves tripled the amount of fabric to soak up the blood and increased the pressure on the wound. I tied the hem of my ruined shirt around the 3 sleeves to apply more pressure and ensure they wouldn’t fall off.

ㅤI collapsed, and, breathing heavily, tried to comprehend what had just happened. We had made it out, that was enough for me right now. I started doing what I do in situations with pressure; I started making a list. All the weird things that had happened got cataloged in my head: A creature had run away from us, this creature did not seem… designed, Moikra got bit by it, I punched it, and we went into a cave. What a day. I knew that we would be pouring over this day for details, trying to draw the creature and find out more about it. First, though, we had to rest. 

ㅤA while later, I stood up and tried to shake Moikra awake. No luck. She had suffered quite the scare and who knows how much her shoulder hurt. It was probably better that she didn’t wake up right at this moment. I picked her up gently. I made sure that her injured shoulder had as little reason to hurt as possible, and I made my way back to the path and back to the town. 

ㅤTHE END

ㅤ}–{To a word from the author}–{

ㅤHo there, dear readers! It is I, Jon Pershing, and I will be narrating this epilogue. That was quite the adventure for such young individuals, wasn’t it? It didn’t quite end there (though no story ever truly ends, does it?).

ㅤBenneth, still carrying Moikra, stumbled into his home (Mr. Grenshaw was out in the fields and Mrs. Grenshaw was making dinner), and worked with Mrs. Grenshaw to set Moikra in bed, replace her bandages, and supply her with food and drink should she wake up. The wound was a bite mark for sure, and it went deep, though nothing that should injure long-term. 

ㅤMoikra awoke the next day just in time for breakfast. The Grenshaw children set out, eager to find out more about the creature, which they dubbed an “Eyeblur” after its large eye and incredible speed. Their investigation consisted of trying to draw it, trying to find it again, and investigating the path and cave it left behind, but it seemed to have vanished.

ㅤWord of their small adventure had spread (though, not fast by any means) to another part of the Fields of Plenty, my house! My wife(caring, lovely, and amazing) was summarizing it for me, and afterward, though I had never met the Grenshaws, I knew I had to write a story about their adventure.

ㅤI got together with them for a cup of tea and freshly baked bread(courtesy of my wife), and they told me the same tale I shared with you. However, there was one thing that they found strange about the whole thing even after it all happened. Something seems wrong with Moikra’s memory regarding the events of that day. Usually, Moikra’s memory is impeccable, but whenever she thinks back to the first Korbulb they ever discovered, she remembers something very different. In this changed memory the Korbulb appears to be cut down the middle with a row of small, sharp, and bloody teeth sticking out of it, and on either side of this “mouth” are rotten indentations that resemble eyes. 

ㅤOverall, they admit the experience has made them both more unnerved. But their adventurous spirits are only dimmed, may they flare up again.

ㅤ-Composed with love and flair, by Jon Pershing