Chapter Eight
The Goatheads
The minutes turned into hours and the hours turned into more hours as darkness descended on Thiside with as much passion as the absence of light could possibly muster. Robert hadn’t exercised this much since secondary school physical education classes, where he was forced to run cross-country over the desolately damp and cold fields in Southern Yorkshire. He managed to run for only the first five minutes before giving up, walking the rest of the way, and always came in dead last.
In truth, he barely noticed the time passing as he took the opportunity to learn as much as he possibly could about Thiside. His fond hope was that he could figure out why he was along on this ride in the first place. Lily was extremely patient with his obvious ignorance and answered most of his questions about the world they currently occupied to the best of her ability. Robert had learned about some of the inhabitants of Thiside. He now knew that humans only made up half the population. Other inhabitants included Humanimals: half human, half animal. There were also Dwarves, Fairies, Gnomes, Munchkins, Giants, Goblins, Ogres, Mermaids, and a variety of creatures that he’d never heard of, even in stories in Othaside.
It had taken a while, several explanations, and some fairly strong insults to his intelligence by the Gnomes until he finally understood how the doors worked. If someone with the Rabbit’s blood as a passport passed through a door, he would go to an equivalent location in Othaside.
Equivalent probably wasn’t the best way to describe it, as locations between realities could sometimes shift as if both realities were blankets that had been stitched together at random points by a deranged sewing woman driven mad by the intricacies of needlepoint and occasionally felt the need to undo her work and re-sew elsewhere.
If the traveller didn’t have a passport, they would be transported quite randomly to another location in Thiside. Doors moved constantly, as if they had a mind of their own. They weren’t driven by anything; they had no purpose except to link locations and worlds and over the past several decades, according to Lily, the amount of doors had diminished considerably. She hinted that there was a moment in their history when a great source of magic had vanished from their world and ever since then, the amount of magic in Thiside began slowly to decline.
After the first hour into their journey, Robert had resolutely decided to ignore the Gnomes. It seemed the best course of action, as any verbal sparring ended in them winning; it appeared that the Gnome race had developed a keen sense of how to insult people. It was a skill they had sharpened throughout the last several centuries until it was as dangerous and as deadly as the weapons they kept concealed upon their person. It was also obvious that the Gnomes had no respect for Othaside or any of its inhabitants, although Robert had no idea why. When he’d asked the Gnomes why they hated Othaside so much, they made a statement that compared Robert to the passing of gas from an elderly female Rath.
He later discovered that a Rath was a pig-like creature that was coloured bright green. Not many people ate them, partially because of the unappealing taste, but mostly because Raths had the ability of speech. They weren’t classed as a Humanimal because they weren’t half of anything. Their simple life functions consisted of eating, sleeping, excreting, and talking single-mindedly to anyone and everyone about current events and local politics. Raths were known to be so boring that they could make people’s appetite vanish completely. Some thought this was a defence mechanism to stop anyone from killing and eating them. The Raths didn’t support such accusations and claimed that they simply enjoyed a good conversation.
The path Robert and Lily had been following finally wound out of the hilly region surrounding the Exchange and led them through a dense forest known only as the Dark Forest, so named because the trees were so dense that they practically blocked out the sun and the closeness of the trees made it impossible to deviate from the path. Lily had said that the Historian lived on the border between the Northern Territory and the Central Region, where they were currently located. Thiside was split into several different provinces, each one controlled by a different ruler, or in some cases, several rulers. Lily explained that they would reach the Historian sometime in the morning and that they’d need to stop for the night, as the Forests of Thiside were dangerous at night.
“Where will we stay?” asked Robert.
“There’s a halfway house in the Dark Forest. I’ve stayed there before. It’ll be a good experience for you; it’s owned by a Humanimal couple.”
“Really?” asked Robert, far too excited than he probably should have been but he couldn’t help it. Everything was new to him today. It was like being born, if being born meant getting dumped, fired, hit by a Fairy, attacked by Gnomes and witnessing a sordid sexual act by a couple of giant birds.
“Thank you,” said Robert to Lily sincerely.
“For what?”
“Just for everything really. Bringing me along.”
Lily smiled a coy smile that Robert had barely seen since first meeting her. As quickly as the smile appeared, it was gone. “Well, it makes sense. Obviously you’re involved in all this somehow.”
“I wish I knew how.” Robert looked around and realized that they were alone. “What happened to the Gnomes?”
“They’re around somewhere, probably scouting ahead.”
Robert had wanted to bring up a subject with Lily but it didn’t seem that she was overly interested in talking about herself at any point. “Lily, where do you fit into this?”
“I work for the Agency.”
“I know, you’ve told me that. Not what the Agency does, but I know you work for them. I was thinking more along the lines of how do you fit into this world? Everyone here seems to have an origin in Thiside.”
“I don’t want to talk about it. If you’re here long enough, maybe you’ll figure it out.”
Gnick and General Gnarly dropped through the overhanging trees and landed lightly in front of Lily and Robert. Gnarly always addressed Lily, rarely even acknowledging Robert’s presence.
“The halfway house currently holds no travellers. Maureen and Melvin Goathead will be happy to accommodate us for the night. They know nothing of the escaped Dwarf.”
“Thank you, General,” said Lily. The Gnome nodded and, with Gnick, turned and carried on along the path. Robert had found it amusing when Lily had told him the Gnomes were warriors. He could scarcely believe that any person so small could be dangerous. Not long after they’d left the Exchange, General Gnarly had announced that he was hungry and in one fluid motion Gnick had produced a dagger from his sleeve and thrown it with pinpoint accuracy at a small bird in a tree at least fifty feet away. Much to the bird’s dismay, its head was severed clean off its shoulders and the carcass was quickly cooked over an open flame and eaten by two hungry Gnomes.
“How far to the halfway house?” asked Robert. Lily simply pointed up ahead. He could see that the pathway widened to accommodate a large stone building with a thatched roof. The windows indicated that the building featured two floors. Smoke billowed from the stone chimney and a warm glow emanated from the windows, making him feel comfortable and cosy just by looking at it.
The incorporeal creature drifted somewhere between the realities as orange and purple colours of no significance swirled around in the nothingness, riding on winds that didn’t exist in a space where no living thing could survive. It had taken time and some searching, but he’d finally found his prey. He had tried again to take corporeal form, but the only result had been an extremely surprised young poet from South America who had been snatched out of his morning shower, propelled across the ocean at the speed of dark and dropped, stark naked, in front of the Sydney Opera House in Australia. A performance of the stage show Cats had just come to an end and the audience was exiting the Opera House into the warm night air.