When Darkness Falls

Chapter 3: WIMBLE

Chapter 3: WIMBLE
The Raok felt the harsh darkness closing in around him forcing him into the dark depths of his mind.   No!  I must fight it!  You will not take me so easily she-elf!   He could feel his awareness waning as he was forced deeper and deeper back into the darkness.  Then he could since the power of the scroll leaving his presence.
  No! You cannot control me!   With that he forced all of his power into controlling his body.  He jerked his body to the side and grasped more tightly to the scroll but for all his efforts moments later the scroll was removed from his hand and he remembered no more.
                   
“The message has not arrived?”
“No, my lord.”
Rashaka smiled wickedly.  “Good.  Prepare for the return of the Raok.”
The Sergeant turned to leave but Rashaka held him back.
“Krothganbier should have a…guest when he arrives”, he said with a hint of sarcasm.  The sergeant smiled, nodded, and left.
                   
Arya woke as the first gentle rays of sunlight fell on her face.  The young elf was stiff, dirty, and a little bit wet, but alive.  She had run away from the camp until her legs would not support her any longer then took refuge in the most heavily limbed tree she could find.
Arya slowly climbed down to the lower branches and searched through the surrounding forest with her far-seeing elf eyes.  She then jumped lightly to the ground and walked over to a nearby stream she had found while searching for a suitable tree.  She quickly bathed in the slow-moving waters and started to head back to the trail.  All night long she had run along side of the trail, not running on it for fear of the Raok tracking her.  She knew running so close to it was dangerous as well, but really had no choice or else she would loose the trail. 
Arya cautiously peered up and down the trail then set down it going to the East where she could find refuge and deliver the scroll.      Perhaps, I could also ask about this dragon egg.  But would they take it from me?  For now I will just find out general information about Dragons and then decide what to do. 
About mid-day Arya took a break and caught a fish in the Ewno and roasted it over a quick fire.     The sooner I get going, the sooner I’ll get a warm bed, hot bath, and a cooked meal.  I’ll have rolls and meats and fruits and…   As she continued to think about precisely what she would like to eat and what she would do when she got to the Elves. The day passed quickly and it was soon dark. 
Once again, Arya spent the night in a tree, since she thought it would be the safest place to sleep.  Tonight she had time to make her sleeping perch a bit more comfortable with some weeds and leaves.
That night, Arya stayed awake looking at the stars through the high branches she was laying in.  It was about high moon (midnight) when she finally fell asleep.  After what seemed just a few minutes of sleep, she was awoken by the sound of a soft raspy voice that seemed to originate somewhere near the base of the tree.  Arya’s heart froze in mid-beat and she was fought to control her breathing.
“She passed this way”, said one of the Raok.  They were following her footsteps from when she was gathering the weeds.  Slowly their voices faded but Arya distinctly heard one of them say, “The little brat!  I’ll have splinters for a month!”  She couldn’t help but smile remembering purposefully putting the roughest stick she could find at the time in its hand, but she knew they would be back in a matter of minutes and catch her if she did not get away instantly.  She quickly gathered up her few possessions and climbed down the tree.
Arya looked around and instantly knew she would not be able to follow the trail other wise they would know where she was headed.  She would have to rely on her childhood memories since she had not been this far East since she was young. 
  If I remember correctly, there should be a worn game trail about a mile due North from here.   She set off in a full sprint knowing her very life depended on how accurate her memory was and how fast here legs would carry her.  In a time of about three minutes Arya found the trail panting for air but not daring to slow her pace.
The trail, though very twisted and often going far out of the way, led in the same general direction she was headed and only went a few miles out of her way.   Besides, she thought, it’s the only safe path I have left.   Arya heard a yell some distance off and knew that the Raok had found her trail.  It was a just few hours until daylight, which didn’t give her long to find a village or a cave or a-   Wait! A cave!  I’ll leave the trail and head North toward the mountains (which were quite close now)   and they’ll loose my trail on the rock.  I guess I’ll just have to take the long way to Bashinma.  
She jumped over a log to her left and headed straight for the mountains.  The route through the mountains would cost her an extra 3 days, but she was willing to take it. 
                   
Kyron mutter angrily as he shuffled down the trail looking for signs of where the Raok and the elf might have gone.  “This never would have happened if I had never found that”, he said as he cast an angry glance backwards at the creature trailing in his wake.  He recalled the events of the past day that had made him loose the elf…
Kyron watched as the Raok tied the unconscious elf to the tree.     How could I have let this happen?   He angrily blamed himself for her capture and decided that he would have to get her out of there.   I need a plan.  Something to distract the Raok, something to lure them away from the elf. 
He looked around but, since he was in a tree, he found nothing.     An arrow!  I’ll shoot far into the other side of the woods and if the Raoks’ hearing is as good as I’ve heard, they will hear it and go investigate!
Kyron took the bow off his back and searched through his quiver for his heaviest arrow or the one that would make the most noise.  Once he found one he strung it and squatted down on the branch in a more steady position.  He aimed directly across from him into the woods, between the trees so it would go farther and give him more time.   Lord, please let this work!  One…two…thr-.   He was cut off as he fell from the tree, down, and down, feeling the darkness groping at him urging him to give in to its clutches. Consciousness slipped away and hit the ground with a thud. Luckily, as soon as he started falling and he let loose the taught bow the arrow sprang forth and landed on the other side of the clearing causing the Raok to jump up and leave the camp where they could not hear Kyron hit the ground. 
When he woke, he found himself in a very uncomfortable position.  After a minute he realized he was upside-down and that he was hanging from a tree with a rope tied around his feet and his hands were bound as well.  At this sudden realization he yelled and struggled frantically.
A sharp knock on the head caused him to jump, or rather he would have if he had been standing, and he turned himself around.  There standing in front of him was one of the oddest creatures he had ever seen.  It was about three feet tall with pointed ears like an elf and was wearing clothes made of wool.  Its shoes were made of what Kyron thought was bark and its skin was, of all colors, green and it had bright blonde hair. Its eyes were dark brown and had a mischievous look about them.  It looked like a little boy of about 10 or 11.
“So your awake now are you?” he said with his hands on his hips. 
  So he can speak Common.   “Where am I?”
“Yes, Wimble can speak Common and you are in Wimble’s house so show some respect.”  He said this firmly but Kyron could have sworn he saw a hint of a smile.
  This creature can read minds!  That must mean it knows what I’m thinking right now.  But what is a Wimble?   But whether the creature could or could not read minds, it paid no heed to what Kyron thought.
“What were you doing on Wimble’s roof?”
“Who’s what?”
“Wimble’s roof!  What were you doing on Wimble’s roof?  The nerve of these creatures”, he said rather more to himself than to Kyron.  “They have no respect for others.  What do they care about Wimble?  Why should they treat Wimble like an equal?  How...” and he droned on and on with a look of exasperation.  Whatever this ‘Wimble’ creature was, Kyron had no idea and he wasn’t really concerned about it.  What he was concerned about though was the gathering blood in his head.  He had a throbbing headache and was starting to feel dizzy. 
“And they just expect Wimble to-“
“Um, excuse me.”
“-door and welcome them with-“
“Excuse me”, he said a little bit louder.
“-arms and say-“
“HELLO!”
The creature shot a wrathful look at Kyron and said, “What?”
“Look, I’m sorry about being on your ‘roof’, but I really must be going and I think my head is going to explode if you don’t let me down.”
“What were you doing on Wimble’s roof?” he said ignoring the last remark.
“I’m sorry, really.  I didn’t know it was, uh,   Wimble’s   roof.”  The creature lifted an eyebrow and crossed its arms.  “Oh come on!  You’ve got to believe me!  I was trying to save an-“
But the creature in front of him snorted and dropped to the ground rolling with laughter about something unclear to Kyron, who was very shaken since he almost told this creature something vitally important.
He sighed in relief and looked questioningly at the creature in front of him.
Tears leaking out of his eyes and gasping for air Wimble looked up at Kyron with a wide grin on his face. 
“Uh, am I missing something?”
“I- (ha, ha, ha) I’m sorry, but you’re just so funny!”
Kyron, taken aback by the creature saying ‘I’, stared at Wimble as though he was crazy.
“I’m sorry, but what in are you talking about?”
“It was a joke!  I wanted to see how long I could keep you guessing!  Now mind you my name is Wimble and you were on my roof so I thought I’d have a bit of fun!  Oh and, by the way, incase you thought I could read minds, I can’t. I could just tell what you were thinking by the very obvious expression on your face.”  Kyron stared at the creature dumb-founded. 
“Well if you ask me, that was more than “a bit of fun”,” Kyron said heatedly.
“Oh, lighten up.  No one got hurt.  Besides, it’s only been a couple of hours.”
“A couple of- A COUPLE OF HOURS!” he roared.  Wimble took a step back.
“Hey, take it easy all right?  I did you a favor.  There were bad creatures out there!”
“I know there were-“ he stopped himself and took a deep breath trying to calm himself down.  By now, his head was throbbing painfully and everything was starting to blur.  "Let me down or my head is going to burst."
Wimble crossed his arms with a raised brow and tapped his foot looking at Kyron.
“O.K.   Please   let me down?”  Wimble smiled with satisfactory and started climbing the tree Kyron was hanging from.  Then Kyron watched as he shimmied up the branch holding the rope.  Once he was right above him he looked down a t Kyron smiled and then took out a knife.
“Oh, no” he groaned.  With one swift slice Kyron found himself falling through air hands and legs still tied.  He hit the ground with a thud as Wimble lightly leaped from the branch onto the ground beside him.
“Oops”, he said trying rather unsuccessfully to hold back a smile.  Kyron lifted up his face with a mouthful of dirt and glared wrathfully at him.
“Now, before I untie you (Kyron grunted in protest), I’m going to question you.  Question one: why is a half-elf, that would be you, climbing around trees this far into the forest?”  But before he had finished, a fountain of dirt had exploded from Kyron’s mouth and he rolled over and jumped up.
He was about to say something when Wimble interrupted him.  “Surprised?” he said with a grin and a flash of his eyes.  “Well, I couldn’t help noticing.  Not with you hanging upside down.  Those ears give you away like feathers do a bird!  Oh, but don’t worry”, he said as Kyron raised his bounded hands up to his ears, “I wouldn’t   dream   of telling anyone.  So, you haven’t answered my question.  What are you doing?”
“I’m, uh, traveling.”
“Good!  Then you wouldn’t mind me coming with you!”
“Now wait just a minute-”
“I’m glad we agree.  I’ll start the preparations at once!”  And with that, he raced out a hole in one of the trees and left Kyron standing there by himself.
“Oh, this is just great!  Not only have I lost time, I’ve gained an annoying little tic as a road mate!”  He hopped over to a tree and sat down.    Lord, I’d really like to know what is going on now!  I’m lost.
As Kyron looked around, he realized he was in a house, not the woods.  There were four trees, one for each corner, and the walls were made of a mixture of vines, leaves, branches and mud, but the walls were not messy looking like you might imagine, they were smooth and graceful.
Wimble was back in a matter of minutes with two packs, one of which was Kyron’s.  “I took the liberty of filling your pack”, he said as he handed it over to Kyron.  Kyron took his dagger from his pack and cut the bounds on his wrists and legs.  Soon as he had finished he stood up looking at wimble slightly annoyed, and headed out the door.
And so here he was now, with this Wimble thing trailing behind him who had given him nothing but grief for the past five days.  First, Wimble dropped one of the water flasks over a cliff and Kyron had to wait half an hour before Wimble found a leaf that was “just right” and then wait for Wimble to sew it and fill it; another thing that constantly drove him crazy was that Wimble would talk hour upon hour about whatever happened to wriggle its way into his head (“Lord, give me strength!”); then, Wimble insisted he knew a short-cut and he got them lost causing them to loose an entire day and when they finally found the trail again, they were a mile behind where they left to take the short-cut.  Now the trail was cold and a storm was coming that would surely wash away all traces of the elf’s passing.
As they walked on, the temperature dropped and the wind started picking up and the two travelers had to bend over, tightly pulling their cloaks around their faces to keep warm.  As the moon slowly sunk down the rain came and they had to call it a quits for the night. 
“There will be no fire tonight”, Kyron said as they crawled under a boulder for protection against the wind.  They pulled their blankets tight and drifted into uneasy sleeps.
Kyron found himself being shaken awake at the crack of dawn by a little green monster.  “Go away, Wimble.” 
“It is time to get up.  We must be on our way.”
“Five more minutes”, Kyron mumbled still half asleep.
“All right”, Wimble smiled mischievously.  “Your loss.  Because, you know, I only found a trail into the mountain that, uh, has signs of an elf and a couple of oddly shaped boots”, he said with his hip out looking at his nails.
Kyron jumped up quickly, yelped, and fell back down.
“Ha, ha, ha!  You O.k.?  You hit your head on the boulder ceiling!”
“Yes, Wimble.  I’m aware of that”, he said through gritted teeth.
“So do you know this elf?  I mean, why the sudden interest?”
“I, uh, I’m just curious.  That’s all.”
“Uh huh.  So, do you want to leave now or what?”
Kyron glared at him and gathered all of his things together in his pack.  Wimble grabbed his bag, he had apparently packed earlier, and headed out the hole he called ‘the door’.
“Watch your head.  We don’t want any more delays”, and with that he skipped out the door so that he did not hear Kyron’s steady stream of insultive mutterings.
After about a quarter of a mile of chasing Wimble around the foot-hills, Kyron found himself looking into a formidable looking crevice, or trail as Wimble called it.  Kyron hesitated on going in but Wimble skipping along whistling a childhood lullaby didn’t seem to notice.  When he was about to take the first skip into the trail he turned around and noticed that Kyron was no longer following him.
“Well?  Are you coming?”  He crossed his arms and tapped his foot.
“Well… are you sure its quite-“
“Safe?  Yes its fine.  Do you see anything wrong with it?  So it’s a little dark.  You’re not scared are you?”
“Well-uh-No!  Of course I’m not scared!  How dare you impune my-“
“Because if you are, I guess we’ll just continue your travels to wherever you were originally going.”  He started walking back the way they came.
“No!  I mean…no thanks.  I’ll, I mean, we’ll just keep going to investigate.”
“Excellent,” Wimble said with a wide grin on his face as he turned around.  Kyron quickly caught up with him and they stepped into the crevice together.
-End of Chapter 3-