Chapter 6, Part i

Chapter the Sixth

“And, hast thou slain the Jabberwock?

Come to my arms, my beamish boy!

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”

He chortled in his joy.

“Excuse me,” hissed a woman's voice with a heavy Humish accent. Lilly jumped in alarm.

(Graphic 6.1: Lilly, hiding behind a large root, looks over her shoulder in shock. Trisha and Tom are hiding around the curve of the trunk of the Tumtum tree. Trisha is clutching a rectangular object with one hand and putting a hushing finger to her lips.)

Lilly hunched down by the root and clutched at her convulsing heart. “What! Who are you?” she gasped. “I-- I'll – wait, you aren't Mome Raths, are you? You don't look like them.”

“I'll take that as a compliment,” said the yellow-haired woman flatly, and easily hopped over the root between them, crouching in the darkness right beside Lilly. Her curly-haired companion with the wide eyes followed. The woman looked Lilly straight in the eye with an intense fierceness. She seemed to be a person that was used to solving problems; for some reason, this immensely calmed Lilly. The woman spoke quickly and quietly. “Look, Tove, I have no idea who you are, but you don't look like a Mome Rath and we don't have time to go window-shopping for allies. Have you seen a blond, blue-eyed guy wearing a button-up shirt and who can't stop talking about books?”

“You must mean Hector,” Lilly said with a measure of confusion. “He was just taken captive by the Mome Raths, and is sitting over there--” she pointed, “with another human and a Tove. However there are many guards around them, and I dare not go to free them.”

“I see,” said the human woman, with little concern. “That situation can be remedied. I'm Trisha, by the way,” she said, and extended a hand just as Hector had done when Lilly had first met him. Unsure how to respond, Lilly extended her hand as well; Trisha gripped it firmly and shook it.

“I'm Tom,” said the young man with Trisha, and they repeated the gesture. “We're friends, I guess. At any rate, we're here to rescue Hector and Aric... I don't know if you know who Aric is. But if he's here I guess we'll rescue him too.” He trailed off, withering under Trisha's flat stare. “Heh...” He gawked at Lilly, as if he had never seen a Tove in person before.

Lilly felt like laughing with relief. “Oh, that is good! Aric is here, and he has been captured along with Hector and Burr. I am so glad that you are here to help us. But I am afraid that you have come during a very sad time. The Mome Raths have followed us to the Tumtum tree, and they plan on seizing control of the Jabberwock once it awakes. They have the vorpal sword. And... sadly... River has become one of them. I saw him use multiple Gyres, which is as unnatural as water flowing up a waterfall... My heart is broken. He defeated Burr and Aric and... What? What is wrong?”

Trisha and Tom were looking at her with obvious confusion. “Um. Yes, I see,” said Trisha dismissively. “Right. River. Who's River?”

Lilly gestured surreptitiously over the top of the root in River's direction. He was standing some distance away from the main body of human Mome Raths, arms folded, with a strange, prideful face. He occasionally glanced in the direction of her captured friends, to make sure they were still there. “That is him,” Lilly whispered. “The Tove with the tan fur. He is a togomila from Noosta, as am I... Sorry,” she added, as Trisha's face again reflected her bafflement. “It is enough to say that he is very dangerous and... cannot be trusted anymore.”

“Right,” Trisha said decisively. She shifted in her sitting position and looked at Tom. “Well, Tommy, what do you think? Let's go free Hector and Aric. And that other guy.”

“Burr,” Lilly supplied. “His name is Burr.”

“Right.” Trisha moved to stand, but Lilly reached out and grabbed her sleeve.

“Wait! How are you going to free them? Those de-slithed Toves will tear you apart!”

Trisha actually laughed. “Lilly, you're talking to Trisha Amsterhurst Blithe. I haven't yet met the troublemaker I can't put in his place. Right, Tom?”

“She's right,” Tom said earnestly, with a bit of dread in his voice.

Slowly, disbelievingly, but with hope blooming in her heart, Lilly released the stranger's arm. Trisha beckoned for her to follow, and together the three of them started off into the green shadows.

*

Hector had been trying to catch some sleep, but the log was horribly uncomfortable, and besides, it was much more interesting to watch the Mome Raths at a distance. They stopped arguing – for the most part – and had gathered in a circle, and they were placing objects in the center with some sort of purpose. A broad, dusty leaf fell out of the air and landed on Hector's head. He shook it off, but it strangely crumbled into dust, making him sneeze.

If the de-slithed Toves standing guard had heard him, they didn't show it. They stood in a circle around them, facing inward. He began to wonder where Lilly was.

He suddenly blinked in surprise.

(Graphic 6.2: The Jubjub bird looms behind one of the Tove guards. With a great sweeping movement, it knocks three of them over and makes short work of the rest. Trisha, Tom and Lilly appear and drag away the unconscious bodies.)

Hector was about to shout in amazement, but Trisha clamped her hand over his mouth. “Shut up, don't say a word,” she hissed, and motioned with her head toward the group of Mome Raths by the tree. Fortunately, not one of them had noticed the scuffle; even River was distracted, trying to get a good look at something in the center of the group.

As soon as Trisha lifted her hand from his mouth, Hector asked, “What are they doing over there?”

“They are opening the Tumtum tree,” Lilly said. She had squatted by Burr and was gently untying him. His breathing was belabored, but he gazed at her gratefully. Hector watched intently as she softly said something to him in Tovish, and he responded with a nod.

Trisha appeared in his vision and yanked Hector to his feet. “You can write the soap opera about them later,” she chided as she cut his bonds. Silently she pointed to the other side of the log, and together they all scrambled over it. Hector saw Tom with one of Aric's arms over his shoulders, dragging the unresponsive man up and over the rotting wood. The Jubjub bird had vanished.

Trisha didn't have them stop until they were well away from the chanting Mome Raths.

(Graphic 6.3: Trisha, Hector, Lilly, Burr, Tom and Aric stop behind a large, mossy boulder; the drooping vines and dead trees around them provide a good hiding spot.)

As he found a comfortable spot to sit, Hector shivered and pulled his jacket tighter; in the recent rush of things, he had forgotten that it was almost December. Trisha offered him her thick coat but he shook his head. Nobody spoke for a moment as they all caught their breath. Lilly fussed over Burr's wounds, checking his slit wrist and feeling his ribs to see if any had been broken. Tom and Trisha were sitting beside Aric cross-legged. Aric's head still hung low.

“...what's wrong? Are you okay?” Tom was saying. He gingerly poked Aric's knee, but there was no response. With eyes filled with unusual concern, Tom looked to Hector. “What's wrong with him? Why won't he talk? Aric, it's you, I know it's you, I'd recognize you better than my own mama! Don't you remember me? C'mon, don't you remember Tommy?”

Aric shifted slightly, but didn't say a thing. Tom lost his temper and grabbed Aric by the shoulders, shaking him with every word.

“Aric! Boss! You have to snap out of it! Curse you, you lazy, stupid--”

“Stop it,” Trisha commanded, and ripped Tom's arms away from him. Tom pushed Trisha over and again seized Aric. “Tom!” Trisha hissed. “Can't you tell he doesn't want to talk? He'll talk when he's ready! You can't just--”

Tom shook his head violently. There were tears in his eyes. “You don't understand! Aric is like a father to me! He must've saved my life fifty times in the streets! Not to mention he pulled me out of the gutter when I was a kid! If it wasn't for him, I'd be dead right now! So why don't you wake up?” This was directed at Aric. Tom desperately shook him one last time with quivering hands. “What is wrong with you?”

“Tell him, Hector,” Aric suddenly said, to the surprise of everyone. Even Burr turned to look.

“Wh-what?” Hector stammered.

Aric's voice was strangely sharp and angry, though he still refused to look up. “I said, tell him what Professor Trellis told you!”

“You mean about--”

“Yes, about that! Tell them all!”

Hector was afraid to meet Tom's eye. He swallowed, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. “Aric... he was a Mome Rath.”

“Still am,” Aric added bitterly.

A dreadful silence gripped the six of them. Trisha was the first to speak.

“You mean... you're one of them?”

“That's not true,” Tom insisted. “No! Professor Trellis was lying!”

“He cannot be trusted,” Lilly added. “He must have been saying that to make us lose heart--”

“Did none of you hear me?” Aric exploded. He glared at Lilly, then at Tom and Trisha with blazing eyes and a fierce grimace. “I am a Mome Rath! Get it into your thick skulls! Yes, I'm one of them! I did everything he said I did! I've killed people! I've done horrible things! I've tortured Toves and robbed them of their Gyres! Yes, Lilly, I did!” Even through her tan fur, Lilly seemed pale.

Tom's face was blank. “So... is that where you went when you vanished from New Poliston?”

Aric sighed and his rage deflated. “Yes,” he croaked. “Yes... though I never physically left the city. You remember that when I vanished we were just about to start up that orphanage that we had been working on for two and a half years. But we had a lot of financial and political problems. I feared that it would never be completed. I guess word got around that I was uneasy about it, because I was quickly contacted by a certain man by the name of Furster. Mr. Furster said that he represented a guild of benefactors that were sympathetic to my cause. He invited me to one of their meetings. At first I didn't want to go, but I was so eager to get that orphanage finally up and running, I didn't care who I met with or where the money came from.

“I went to their meeting, and it was there I met Professor Trellis. Trellis said that they would be more than willing to help out, but they just needed a couple errands run. They were so eloquent and kind – so they seemed, anyway – that I accepted the job. Well, that job was to acquire some papers from a neighboring city. As it turns out, when I got to that city their informant there said that those papers were birth certificates – to this day I don't know why they needed them, for something nasty and illegal to be sure – and, as an extra detail that they hadn't told me, I needed to assassinate someone to get them. I knew it wouldn't rest well with my conscience, but we needed that money so badly, and I had no other option... I don't know exactly what made me do it. Maybe all those years keeping the peace in such a rough place as New Poliston had hardened me. I don't know.

“I did the job. I brought the papers back. 'Just one more job,' they said, 'and the money's all yours.' So I reluctantly accepted. This second job was to kidnap a Tove, and nobody likes Toves, at least not most folks, and hardly anyone in New Poliston can even stomach the thought of them. So that wasn't so bad, I suppose; I'll spare you the details. But I did the job and got the Tove in question. I handed him over to Trellis and never saw the poor soul again.

“As you can imagine, the Mome Raths kept leading me on, from one job to the next, without actually ever fulfilling any of their promises. They introduced me to the ancient magics, which is a topic for another day, it really is. Sorry, Hector. Nasty stuff. But it is deeply tied to slithia, the life energy of the world and its inhabitants, and manxoma, the act of transferring that energy. These ancient practices let you steal the strength from living things, like Toves and people and... I'd best not go on. But, to my eternal shame, I got sucked in. I became addicted. I lost track of time as weeks and months passed by; I had even forgotten the orphanage and the New Poliston Alliance For The Betterment Of Urban Fellows. I started going by Gerard instead of Aric, so I wouldn't be tracked down. I had fame, in my sphere; I had fortune; I had access to all the worldly pleasures a man could hope to have.

“Then, one day, three years after Furster had contacted me, I overheard a conversation among certain fellows of mine. They were talking about something called the Jabberwock. It was an ancient beast of untold power and might, whose power could be harnessed to our own ends. Over the next few weeks I heard more and more of the Jabberwock until it became common knowledge among all Mome Raths. It was going to awaken soon, I heard them say, and we could take control of it. Use it for our own dark purposes. Command all of New Hume, then cross the sea and conquer the Old Kingdom. It sounded too big a project, too glorious – to use the vernacular – to be true.

“But then I learned that many people would have to die in order to get enough slithia to take over the Jabberwock. Since the average Tove has more slithia available than the average human, we would capture as many as we could and sacrifice them; hundreds, thousands of souls would be lost just so we could threaten and kill even more people with the Jabberwock.

“Well... something clicked inside me that day. Something that had laid buried in the back of my memory for years and years, which I thought I had forgotten. It's something I've never told anyone before; not even you, Tom.

“When I was a kid, I lived in an orphanage. I actually went by Gerard then, which is actually my real name. I had never known my parents. Nobody knew who they were or where they had gone. But I lived there until I was about five or six.

“One day the orphanage where I lived was attacked by Toves. I was too young to understand why; they were probably just retaliating, because we humans would always attack their nearby settlements out of spite and prejudice. Anyway, I remember that a hole was blown in the wall. There was complete chaos, and I ran outside to get away. Unfortunately, I ran straight into the thick of battle. I remember seeing fire shoot through the sky and land on the wreckage. There was screaming and shouting and anger and death everywhere. I tripped in the middle of the battlefield, and I was sure that I was about to die...

“But suddenly somebody scooped me up in their arms. Everything was too hectic for me to see who it was, but they were carrying me somewhere. This person then left me in another building, under the care of the few orphanage workers left alive. He left and I never saw him again, except for one moment when I looked back and got one good look at him.

“It was a Tove.”

Aric choked for a second, then continued.

“It was a Tove. A Tove had rescued me, a human child, from certain death. He was probably killed soon after. I don't know. But that very moment returned to my mind when I heard about the Jabberwock in New Poliston, and I knew deep down in my bones that I had to stop the Mome Raths from doing this terrible thing and killing so many innocent people of both races. After some investigation I learned that the ritual needed to sap the life energy from enough Toves and humans was only found in a lost manuscript called the Manxor Slithe. Its last recorded location had been in Dunberg to the south. It was only a rumor, so I knew I had to go there first. I also was familiar with the legend of the vorpal sword and the defeat of the Jabberwock a thousand years ago, and I thought to myself: if I could preemptively kill the Jabberwock so that nobody could use its power for evil, perhaps I could atone for my many black deeds. So I stole the vorpal sword which was held in the Special Collections of the New Poliston Museum of Ancient Cultures – sorry again, Hector, how it got there is a history lesson for another day – and I headed south. And from there, you already know the rest of the story.”

Everybody sat still, digesting what they had heard. Trisha inhaled to speak, but then huffed indignantly. “Hector, are you seriously writing all that down? Don't you have an ounce of respect?”

“Hold on, I'll forget it if I stop,” Hector said, and scribbled even faster in his journal. Aric chuckled mirthlessly.

Tom let out the breath he had been holding. “Well, Aric... you may have done a lot of things wrong. But I know that you also did a lot of things right. I know that you're a good man at heart.”

Aric laughed again. “You've been spending too much time around Hector, Tomas. You're starting to sound like him.”

“No, I mean it,” Tom insisted. “I honestly don't care that you're a Mome Rath. Not if you're willing to stop them now. I'll do whatever you ask me to, just like the old days.”

Aric looked seriously at Tom and unconsciously rubbed his knuckles. “You... you really mean it? You mean you're not...”

“Angry? Hurt? Disgusted?” Hector said without looking up from his journal.

“I'm not afraid,” Tom finished. “I still trust you. A plan to slay a legendary creature with a legendary sword, stopping evil magicians in the process? Sounds like the old Aric to me.”

“I'm with you as well,” said Hector, and slammed his journal closed.

“Count me in,” said Trisha.

Lilly nodded. “We must do this together.”

“Time to eat Jabberwock,” said Burr, and licked his chops hungrily.

Aric seemed unable to decide whether he was going to laugh or cry. Tears welled up in his reddened eyes, and he wrapped one arm around Tom's neck and the other around Hector's. He squeezed them close to himself. “Thank you,” he sobbed. “Thank you for believing in me when I don't even believe in myself.”

“Everybody deserved a good friend,” Hector said into Aric's cheek.

“You're choking me,” Tom gasped.

Trisha actually smiled. “Okay, once you're done hugging each other, we can get started. We need to act fast. The first item of business would probably be this...” She reached into her shoulder bag, pulled out a familiar hardbound book and handed it to Hector. “This is for you, Hec.”

Hector gasped with delight. “The Adventures of Sir Jimbo! I can't believe it! You brought this all the way from Dunberg?”

“And this is for you,” Trisha said, and produced another book. This one was thick and old, its worn leather cover illegible, its pages yellowed and frayed. She handed it reverently to Aric, whose eyes opened wide.

“I can't believe it,” he murmured, and ran a hand over the binding. “It's the Manxor Slithe! Where did you find it? It wasn't in Dunberg, was it?”

“Wait, wait, hold on a second,” Hector said, and gently stole the thick volume. He expertly flipped through the pages and drank in its musty odor. “This is the Manxor Slithe? Really? You mean it's been this book the entire time?”

“Do you know that book?” Lilly asked hopefully. “See, I knew that it had been in your library!”

“I'm super confused,” Tom announced.

Hector shook his head in disbelief. “Ah, I remember now! Look, this old thing has always been sitting in the History Section of the library. I used to read this thing for hours at a time, or at least try to read it. Once I finally realized that it was written in Q'imuh, I taught myself the language from a dictionary we had--”

“Wait, a Q'imuh dictionary?” Aric gaped, but Hector waved the comment away.

“Story for another day. I read this thing from cover to cover, then upside-down and backwards! Of course, then they made me Head Librarian, and I no longer had time to read it as thoroughly. Just a couple days ago I received a request from the Central Library in New Poliston for a couple books, including this one, so I sent it off with Trisha the day before I met you, Lilly.”

Aric nodded slowly, as the pieces of the puzzle visibly came together in his head. “It must have been the Magnanimous Society of the Fist of Wisdom. They man the Special Collections of the Central Library.” Hector moved to hand the book back to Aric, but he pushed it back into Hector's arms. “No, Hec, you hang onto it. You can definitely read it better than I can.”

“But...” Hector hefted the book in his hand. It smelled strongly of dust and mold, an odor that Hector usually treasured among the venerated books of the library, but something still itched at the back of his mind about this particular book. It made its rich smell turn sour and choking. “What is this book, anyway? What do I do with it?”

Aric licked his lips in stunned thought. “Um. Well. I'm not entirely sure. I know that the Mome Raths want to use it to take control of the Jabberwock once it wakes up, but I don't know what we could do with it.”

Hector started flipping through the pages, trying his best to remember the old days when he used to peruse them. “I remember,” he said hesitantly, “I remember that there is a lot in this book about anatomy. Like on this page, for example.” He flattened the book and held it up so everyone could see. Covering both pages was an anatomical sketch of a Tove, with descriptions and annotations written in Q'imuh. There were handwritten notes in the margins, also in the strange language. “However, I never could figure out why there were things like this in here. From the little I could read, it certainly didn't seem like a book on biology, or about Tovish culture.”

Aric sighed. “Yeah, about that... The Manxor Slithe is a book about the flow of life energy and how that flow can be manipulated. That drawing right there just talks about the ritual practice of sucking Gyres from Toves, and where the ceremonial trinkets and paint and gunk has to go. Pretty nasty stuff.”

Lilly spoke up in a quavering voice. “So, how is it done? The taking away of a Gyre? And where does the Gyre go?”

“Well, you see, the ritual of Gyre-stealing is a pretty systematic operation,” Aric spoke in a strangely conversational tone, as though he were describing how to knit a sweater or cook a roast. “You have to prepare a space where it can be done – sometimes called a witch-circle, by the type of folks who don't like to talk about this stuff – by placing certain objects and paints in that circle. You know, objects like owl feathers, toad legs, little blue rocks from the bottom of the ocean, that kind of stuff. And paint made from ground-up ferret skulls and other things. Anyway, you get the witch-circle ready, you paint the Tove here and here and here --” He shifted his position and poked gently at Burr on the temples, on his neck and over his heart, “ – then you've got to burn this certain kind of incense made from powdered fossils and tears shed on a summer midnight – kind of romantic, I guess, if you like that kind of thing – and recite a certain set of phrases, and boom. Gyre is removed. As for where the Gyre goes, it usually just flies away and we don't really know what happens to it. However, in River's case, it looks like they've figured out how to capture those Gyres and give them to another Tove.”

Lilly swallowed and shrunk away. “C-can --” she cleared her throat, “Can Gyres be replaced?”

Aric only shrugged. “Don't know. I've never tried. Maybe, maybe not. I doubt it, though.”

“Can't he just use the Gyre and escape?” Burr asked. Aric shook his head.

“Nope. One of the properties of the circle. Gyre's can't be used inside it.”

“And a Tove turns into a zombie when they suck out the Gyre?” Tom wondered. Aric nodded.

Hector was quickly scanning several pages while the others talked. “And this book will help the Mome Raths control the Jabberwock?” Trisha asked.

“Yes, by releasing life energy from other beings and using them as a sort of leash,” Aric explained.

“What will they use as fuel? Us?” said Tom.

“Probably. But only if they catch us.”

Suddenly, as if they had been waiting for Aric to say that very thing, there burst through the heavy foliage surrounding them several Tovish thralls. With unnatural speed and strength they wrestled Trisha and Tom to the ground before they could even cry out. Hector leaped behind a nearby log and lay flat against the ground with the Manxor Slithe open in front of him. He turned pages frantically.

There were the sounds of a scuffle, but they were brief and the struggle soon ended.

“Demons!” Hector heard Burr yell hoarsely, but there was the sound of an impact, and a yelp from Burr.

“Ah, the prisoners,” said a haughty human voice that Hector didn't recognize. He silently spat a rotting leaf from his mouth. “Here you are. That was very clever of you to escape using the Jubjub bird. It's too bad we've captured him, and we're going to put his life force to better use. The same with all of you. It's a shame, really, Gerard, that you'll have to go as well, but the good Professor has decided that you would be more useful to us if you were dead. I'm afraid you know too much.”

Hector found the page he had been looking for; he closed the book with his finger marking his place. To his surprise he found a hole in the log, where he could stick his head inside and spy on the others through a tiny crack in the wood. He squinted, and saw a Mome Rath standing over Aric and the others. Six de-slithed Toves stood guard around them.

“The Jabberwock is awake and you'll never leash him in time,” Aric said.

“That may be true,” said the cultist, and the ground shuddered in response. A deep, groaning growl echoed through the forest and made Hector's skin crawl. There was the distant but sharp sound of wood cracking. “But that doesn't mean we can't guide the beastie's power in other ways. But wait, I sense that there is one of you missing. Where is the librarian?”

“He's not here,” said Lilly with contempt.

The Mome Rath laughed. “Oh, yes he is, don't lie to me, miss. You, go find him,” he said, and pointed to a black-robed Tove. It immediately moved to obey and started sniffing at the air. It took a few steps toward the log, then another, then another...

With the book as his guide, Hector quickly drew a large circle in the dirt with his finger.