Becoming P.T. Lyfantod - 24
A serial fantasy novel
What follows is Part 24 of Becoming P.T. Lyfantod
If you missed Part 1, start there:
All was darkness. I had the brief sensation of being disembodied. Formless consciousness in an infinite void. Then my body reasserted itself, and the world came with it. There was Tom. Iain hovered over Merry.
“I said I’m fine, Iain!”
I’d just formed the impression of a small, stone-walled room when something landed on my back, and my face went to meet the floor, cold and hard against my cheek.
“Stu! Ge…roff!”
Iain’s trainers appeared beside my head, and the weight vanished. I groaned. “Thanks.”
I pushed to my feet, massaging my jaw, in time to see Merry stalk over and punch Tom in the arm. It looked like it hurt.
“Why did you touch it?”
“Ow!” Tom massaged his bicep. “What the hell? This was his idea!” He thrust his chin in my direction. “Don’t get mad at me!”
“He didn’t touch the magical glowing rock!”
“He did. Otherwise he wouldn’t be standing here. And so did you!”
“I touched it because you did, you—urgh!” She shoved him. “How could you be so reckless? You could have died!”
“But I didn’t die. And now we’re here.” He spread his arms. “Wherever here is.”
“Does it say anything about this in your book, P.T.?” Stuart asked.
I looked around. We stood at one end of a boxy room, longer than it was wide. The walls, floor, and gently sloping ceiling were all grey stone. The only apparent way in or out was a set of sturdy-looking wooden doors on the far side. In the center of the room sat a rough, angular pedestal, upon which sat a rough, angular skull that was topped with a drooping candle. Stout iron baskets heaped with smoldering coals to either side provided light and heat. The air smelled of smoke and sodden earth.
I shook my head. “Willoughby never found the stone.”
Merry crossed to the doors and pushed, but they didn’t so much as creak. She turned to face us. “Now that we’re here, what’re we supposed to do?”
I crouched to study the skull. It didn’t look exactly human, small and misshapen. Short fangs jutted from both jaws. Beside it, a number of slender sticks stuck up from a pile of pale sand. “I think I know.”
“P.T.,” Stuart said in a quavering voice, “are you sure that’s a good idea?”
Iain knelt beside me. “Do you think it was a kid?”
“It looks like a little ogre,” I said.
“Or a goblin.”
I licked my lips. Was this a good idea? But my indecision was fleeting. I plucked one of the sticks and thrust it into the fire. It caught easily. “There’s only one way to find out.”
“You’re going to light the death candle?” It was the first I’d seen Tom show unease.
“I’m with Tom,” said Stuart. “Let’s try something else.”
“It’s what we’re supposed to do. I’m sure it’ll be…fine.” I touched the burning stick to the curled black wick.
The candle sputtered to life, eliciting a round of gasps. It sparkled and crackled before settling into a flickering teardrop shape, bluish-green like before. We gathered round to stare, save Tom and Stuart, who seemed happier near the wall.
“Nothing’s happening,” said Iain after nearly a minute.
“Try touching it,” suggested Tom.
“No!” Merry and I shouted in unison.
“At least, not yet,” I amended. “Just…wait.”
Another minute passed. Two. The wick withered. The flame quivered. Merry tried the doors again to no avail.
“That was anticlimactic.” Tom was undeniably relieved.
I was inclined to agree with him, though I wasn’t happy about it. The flame had burned down to the wax and was starting to weaken.
“Maybe you should touch it, Tom,” suggested Iain.
Tom sneered.
The candle sagged and slumped, giving up what little shape it had. Rivulets of wax ran down, dripping onto dusty stone. And then the flame winked out in a wisp of smoke to a chorus of frustrated sighs.
“It was a nice idea.” Merry turned back to the doors, apparently to search for hidden levers.
“I really thought it would work,” I muttered and went to join her, running my fingers along the frame.
Merry got down on her hands and knees, attempting to peer underneath. “There’s air…”
“Uh. Guys…” There was an odd quaver in Iain’s voice.
“What is it, Iain?” Merry said, as Stuart said, “Oh.”
That “oh” made me turn.
“Jenkins,” said Tom nervously.
“I didn’t do anything!”
Merry was the last to look. “What are you—”
It was the candle. It was back.
“Ghost candle,” Iain breathed, and the moment he said it, I knew he was right. Where the shapeless hunk of wax had been, a new candle stood freshly formed, semi-transparent and sickly green. I could see the original beneath it.
We watched in horror as the spectral candle began to rise and a ghostly green skull came with it. The second skull was an exact copy of the first but clearly immaterial. Vertebrae followed, then bony ribs and shoulders. Fleshless arms and legs emerged, and soon an entire skeleton floated before us, crooked and ill-formed, as if shaped by an unskilled maker.
“H-hello?” said Merry. There was no reply.
“It’s a dead ghost.” Tom shook his head in disbelief.
All of a sudden, the skeleton shook itself like a wet dog, with a noisy clattering of bones and a sloppy, sloshing, burbling sound, and then the ghost was clothed in pale-green flesh. There wasn’t one of us who didn’t have their back pressed up against the wall then.
The creature hanging in the air before us looked like a fat, ghostly baby out of some old Catholic painting, but it was by far the ugliest cherub I had ever seen, as crooked in flesh as it had been without it, with a bulging fish belly and short, clawed fingers and toes like pointed pebbles. The candle burned steadily upon his head.
His chubby chest swelled, and he spread his arms. Eyes fixed straight ahead, he opened his wide, toothy mouth and began to speak.
“Hail, adventurer! You have found the first standing stone of Cyril Lightfoot and the Order of the Brazen Horn!” The walls echoed this gravelly pronouncement. “You have taken the first step down a long and dangerous road. At the end, you will find glory everlasting—should you prove worthy to follow in the Bardic tradition, and join in the eternal fight against the fell… Teenagers!”
The hideous creature seemed to see us for the first time. He spun in the air, squinting at each of us in turn, before his gaze alighted upon me. “You!” He pointed, flame quivering. “With the hair! How did you get in here?”
“I—we—that is, she sang…” I stammered, uncertain whether I was giving Merry due credit or throwing her under a bus. I tried to back away, but I’d retreated as far as I could.
“Sang!” the creature snarled, clenching tiny fists. “Bugger all, of course they sang…” He squeezed his eyes shut and ground his teeth, and his head resembled an old potato.
“Fine!” he bellowed, with sudden, explosive energy, tossing his hands in the air. “Fine!” He floated around the room, hurling words like spiteful stones. “You got me. Fair and square. You’re in! Everything I said a minute ago? It still counts. Hail adventurer? That. You’re adventurers. Congratulations. What year is it?”
Overwhelmed by the shouting and the hovering and that we were talking to a ghostly imp, it was a moment before any of us registered the question. We exchanged nervous glances. Merry was first to recover.
“It’s 1996.”
“Nineteen…” The imp swooped down to gaze at his own waxy skull. “Oh hell, how long have we been asleep?”
I like that you put some humor into it.