31 Days of Halloween #24

The Goosemother Scroll - Episode 12 Music performed by J.F. Archer. Text below. Read to the end for the Elephant Queen's song.

And so it was war.

And though it was war, Pyg felt safer than she had since leaving her mother’s home with her poor, unfortunate brothers. The rhinoceros king’s army was twenty thousand strong with beasts of every fur, scale, and feather. Soon, they were joined by the elephant queen and her forces whose shortage of soldiers was made up for in the sheer size of those tusked fighters.

Pyg liked the elephant queen. She was as fierce as the horned king but to Pyg and Leap she was as gentle as Pyg’s own mother.

“My daughter would have been your age, I think, had she not been taken from this world by evildoers,” the queen told her.

Often, Pyg’s thoughts returned to her mother, and she would feel very sad. She wondered if Mother knew that Strongheart and Meekfoot were dead. Was Mother even alive anymore? Had the Master’s Legion destroyed her homeland?

I can’t think about those things now, Pyg told herself. There’s no going back. It never does any good to worry about places you can’t go back to.

But worrying about the future was just as painful. Who was this Master? Was he truly the Shadow Bringer? If the words of the Goosemother Scroll were true, could he even be defeated? “If there be an end to this blight,” went the verse. If! And if the Shadow Bringer could be defeated, the end, so said the scroll, would be small. Pyg did not know what that meant, but she was certain of one thing. There was nothing small about a war.

Exhausted by these thoughts of things she could not change, Pyg looked to her traveling companion. Leap had been very quiet since they first reached the rhinoceros king. He ate little. He stared sadly into the distance. He was not the cheerful pup from the abbey anymore.

“What’s the matter, Leap?” she asked him once.

“Nothing,” he had said. “I just miss my family sometimes.”

Pyg left it at that. She knew something of pain and of wishing to be left alone with it.

They traveled for days, stopping only for sleep and to replenish their food and water when they could, though sometimes there was none to be found. When they did stop, Pyg would listen to the songs and stories of the soldiers. Many of them, too, had lost loved ones the tragic night that Pyg was born.

Even the Elephant Queen had a song, and it was the saddest of them all.

It was one such night of song and story when the moon suddenly turned black with winged bodies. With this darkness came the screeches of a hundred thousand bats and owls, each of whom wore armor that bore a familiar sigil: black claws with a gray shadow.

The battle had begun much sooner than planned.

The Elephant Queen’s song:

Cry no more, my daughter, Cry no tears for me. For when the Mother comes She will fold me in her wings. “How will the Mother come When her wings are stone from grief?” I do not know, my daughter, Will you ask her when you meet?

31 Days of Halloween #22

The Goosemother Scroll - Episode 11 Text below.

“If your majesty will permit me, I believe I can divine the message of the parchment,” said a silken voice.

The voice belonged to an ostrich with intricate designs painted upon her beak. A headdress of gold links and jewels crowned her head, her feathers were dusted with a greenish pigment, and Pyg could have sworn her eyes glowed a faint emerald color. As Pyg stared into those eyes, she suddenly found herself with the knowledge that the ostrich lady was Estruthia, the Priestess of Gol. How she knew this, Pyg couldn’t have said.

The king nodded curtly, and the ibex handed the message to the priestess. Estruthia then waved a wing over the sodden page and muttered some words in a language Pyg had never heard until a light began to emanate from the shapeless stains that had once been words.

“Little Hog’s words are true, your majesty,” said Estruthia. “This message comes from the eldermouse Longtail, who bid both hog and wolf to bring it to you. The eldermice implore you to send your army, for they believe the Sh--”

Here the priestess faltered and shuddered. She quickly recovered, however, and continued. “The Shadow Bringer,” she said, “has all but taken over the Green Lands.”

The light died as quickly as it had appeared, and the message was but a sopping sheet again. The rhinoceros king, however, laughed once. A bitter laugh. It made Pyg afraid.

“Longtail is too late,” he said. “If the Master is the Shadow Bringer, he has already covered us in his darkness. Those wretches you saw on the shore. All betrayed their kings for him. And their kings betrayed each other, and now I am one of the few left to watch over the poor beasts they abandoned in evil’s name.”

“Why aren’t you fighting him? Why are you just sitting still?” Pyg asked. She quickly lowered her eyes, afraid she might provoke the massive king. But the rhinoceros instead laughed raucously, his giant belly shaking as he did.

“What do you think we’re doing?” he asked. “Do you think I live in a tent? We march to Historious, Little Hog. The Mountain at the Top of the World. The profaner has taken it for himself and holds the eldermice prisoner below it. And make no mistake, Hoglet. We will crush him.”

The king sat upon his cushions again and, to Pyg’s relief, ordered that she and Leap be untied.

“Forgive my severity,” he said. The first kind words he’d said since they met. To Leap, he offered a stiff apology. “The wolves murdered my wife and only child some years ago, and the children of many of my friends. Your kind are no friend to me. But I will not punish you for what you did not do. I cannot say that we will be like brothers, but you will be treated as a guest so long as you are on the business of the eldermice.”

“Thank you, your majesty,” Leap replied quietly.

“Servants! Bring these two some food and water,” the king ordered. “Set up a tent for them and see that they are as comfortable as it is possible to be in this wilderness.”

After a simple meal of dried fruit and nuts that tasted to the two beleaguered travelers like a sumptuous feast, Pyg braved another question of the horned king.

“Now that our message is delivered, your highness, we had hoped,” Pyg said anxiously, “well, we had hoped you would help us return home. If you can spare a ship.”

“Return home?” the king sneered. “I think not. Even if you could survive another sea journey, I have no intention of releasing you now.”

“But your majesty,” Pyg began.

“I will hear no more of this!” the king shouted. “Let you go so that you can be snatched  by the evildoer and turned against me? Let you go so that you can lead him to me? You must think me a fool. No, Little Hog. You and the wolfling are my guests. And you will remain my guests until I do release you. And I will not release you until we have won Mount Historious back from the shadows.”

31 Days of Halloween #20

The Goosemother Scroll - Episode 10 Text below.

Their captors were beasts neither Pyg nor Leap had seen before. They looked like huge dogs but with peculiar rounded ears. They had blunt snouts and sharp teeth, and they punctuated their speech with eerie cackles that made them seem mad. Pyg had read about beasts like these before, but in writing, hyenas sounded so strange that she’d thought they were imagined. But once she had thought the Ghosts of Men were imagined, too, and she had now seen them for herself.

The hyenas bound Pyg and Leap and pushed them down a narrow, winding trail for at least three miles before they came to a clearing. In the clearing was a great tent of purple cloth, richly adorned with gold tassels and medallions. Two armored guards, one a cheetah and the other an ibex with enormous horns, flanked the entrance to the tent. Each carried bright yellow banners emblazoned with the same rhinoceros seal Pyg had seen in the traitors’ graveyard. Could it be? Had she been delivered to the rhinoceros king himself? She wanted to be happy, but all she could think of now were the ropes cutting into her flesh, and she’d have given up this whole mission for a crust of bread and some water.

“Halt!” said the ibex. “Who have you brought before the Horned King?”

One of the hyenas stepped forward and bowed.

“We bring trespassers, sir!” she said. (Pyg had not realized until now that the hyena was female.) “We heard the Shrieks and found them near the shore. They are strangers to our land.”

The other hyena spoke next, though he kept a tight hold on his prisoners. “We would have killed them,” he said, “but we thought His Majesty might take interest in them for it has been some time since anyone was able to sail the Wide Sea and live.”

The ibex looked to the cheetah who considered this for a moment and then nodded.

“We will take them,” said the ibex. He tossed a few coins to the hyenas, who cackled to each other, dropped to all fours, and scampered gracelessly away.

The rhinoceros king was the biggest animal Pyg had ever seen. He made a fierce sight indeed despite the delicate gold rings upon his forehorn and the many plush pillows upon which he reclined. He glowered at Pyg and Leap when they entered and said nothing for a time. Pyg wondered if he’d fallen asleep with his eyes open until he swatted away a servant antelope who’d come to offer him water.

At last he spoke. “Why,” he said in a very deep voice, “have you brought a wolf into my den?”

“The bounty hunters said they came from the sea,” answered the ibex.

“Did they now?” said the king with a short laugh. He narrowed his eyes and addressed the prisoners directly. “Who are you, then, that the Ghosts of Men would allow you passage?”

Leap started to answer, but the cheetah struck him. “If the wolf speaks again, he loses his tongue,” said the cheetah as if he had said it a thousand times before.

“Don’t you dare hurt him!” Pyg cried out. She almost received a matching blow, but the horned king held up a hoof, and the cheetah drew back.

“The Ghosts spare your life, and now you defend the wolf,” said the king. “Your resemblance to my enemies grows stronger with every word, Little Hog. Your next words had better convince me that you should live.”

“We were sent by Father Longtail of the Southtunnel Abbey to bring you a message,” Pyg answered boldly. “That wolf has saved my life twice, and his name is Leap.”

The rhinoceros king stood abruptly, his huge nostrils flaring.

“All who quote the eldermice with lying tongues are soon without tongues at all,” he boomed. “Prove your allegiance or you will have no tongue with which to plead for the wolf’s life.”

“In my cloak!” Pyg said hurriedly. “I have a parchment inside my cloak!”

The ibex reached inside her cloak and extracted a soggy roll of paper. But Pyg’s heart fell when the guard unrolled it.

“It says nothing,” said the ibex. “If ever it said anything, the sea has long washed it away.”

“Well, well,” said the rhinoceros king. “What an unlucky day for little hogs and their pets.”

31 Days of Halloween #18

The Goosemother Scroll - Episode 9 Text below.

Pyg and Leap found themselves standing upon the shore of the elephant coast, Pyg watching the ghost ship vanish behind them, Leap shivering as he stared at the carnage before them.

“I wonder if he knew,” said Pyg.

“Who? And, er, what?” asked Leap, who was transfixed by the sight of a rotting zebra.

"Father Longtail about the Ghosts of Men,” answered Pyg. Her voice trembled. “About whatever happened here. Maybe we weren’t expected to come back. Maybe that’s why we were given such a useless excuse for a boat!”

She bent down, picked up a rock and threw it at the sun-dried carcass of a gazelle. The rock hit its target, disturbing a cluster of flies who cursed her as they scattered.

“Oh, no! Don’t say that!” said Leap. “Father Longtail is good and kind! If he said we’d be safe, I believe he really thought so. And-and-and besides! The Rhinoceros King will help us. I heard he has dozens of ships. He’ll get us home! I’m sure of it.”

“I’m not so sure about a king who would allow all this to happen. If he’s even a king anymore,” Pyg grumbled, gesturing to the death all around them. “Suppose he’s tied to a pole like one of these somewhere, too?”

Leap spied something nearer to the trees and cautiously made his way toward it.

“Pyg! Come look at this!” Leap called. Pyg caught up with him and saw a bleached wooden sign posted in the sand. It said: We you see are the dead of traitors. Take heed all who walk upon this soil. If you be treacherous, you will die. Beside this declaration was a brownish-red stamp in the shape of a rhinoceros head.

“See?” said Leap. “Those, um, those, well... they’re just warnings! Maybe it’s not so bad after all!”

Pyg was about to speak when there was a strange sound like leather twisting and turning. A feeling in her very bones told her not to look up, but look she did. And when she did, her blood ran cold.

“Leap?” she whimpered.

All of the wretched traitorous bodies had somehow turned their dead heads toward Leap and Pyg as if looking down at them. Then, very suddenly, they wrenched open their putrid jaws and shrieked. Oh, the horror of that sound! One hundred soulless voices screaming all at once!

Leap grabbed Pyg’s hoof, and together they fled into the trees. But no matter how hard they ran, they could not escape that horrible screeching. They stopped just once for breath, but it was once too long. Scarcely had they paused when they were seized from behind.

31 Days of Halloween #16

The Goosemother Scroll - Episode 8 Text below.

Leap lifted his head to the moon and howled. It curdled Pyg’s blood to hear it, and yet there was something almost regal about the sound. It was the sound of ages past. The sound of mystery. And, most certainly, of death.

Pyg saw the ghosts, blood-hungry even in their dead forms, pause at Leap’s voice. Then, all at once, they made horrible faces of rage and ravenousness, and they rushed for the young wolf. Pyg couldn’t watch anymore. This is the end, she thought, weeping into her hooves. And it’s all been for nothing!

She heard Leap yelp, then heard his claws scrape the deck as he ran back from the advancing specters. He howled again, louder and longer. This time was different.

Pyg peeked through her hooves, and was astonished to see the ghosts hovering in place, still, almost contemplative. Then they turned away and faded into the mist, leaving the wolf unharmed. Soon after, the ship began to turn, though there was no one at the helm.

It can’t be, thought Pyg, but the ship’s compass would confirm what she already knew. The vessel had changed course for the Elephant Lands.

“It’s all right now,” said Leap in an old wolf’s voice. Then he laughed and said, “That was a close one!”

He grinned, finally returning to his usual self, but Pyg could see he was troubled.

“I don’t understand anything,” she said.

“Father Longtail says the dead men are servants of the Shadow Bringer,” Leap explained. “If the Master is the Shadow Bringer, and he has a bunch of wolfkind serving him, then that must mean the man ghosts will listen to wolves, too. I hoped it did, anyway. So, I used the old tongue. All wolves know it. It’s how we speak to each other when we don’t want others to understand.”

“What did you say to them?” asked Pyg.

At this, Leap’s ears fell back. “I... I said I was the servant of the Master, and you were my prisoner,” he answered shyly. He walked over to her and whispered. “I didn’t want to, but it was the only way. I told them not to harm us and to take us to the Elephant Lands.”

“I can’t believe it was that easy,” Pyg replied. She wondered if it truly was so simple. After all, it was the wolves of the Master’s Legion who murdered her brothers, and even they were afraid of the Ghosts.

“Yeah! Pretty lucky, huh?” Leap laughed a little too loudly. Pyg suspected there was more he wasn’t telling her, but after the past few days, she didn’t care to ask. She just wanted to reach their destination alive. The eldermouse had said the Elephant Lands were safe, and the Rhinoceros King was a friend. She dreamed of them when at last she gave in to sleep. Her dreams were simple and happy.

But safety was not the picture that greeted her when the sun rose the next morning to reveal the elephant coast ahead. Instead she saw an imposing carpet of tall, dark trees. Before the trees was a narrow sandy beach. And on the beach stood rows upon rows of tall wooden poles bearing the bodies of a hundred dead beasts.

31 Days of Halloween #14

The Goosemother Scroll - Episode 7 Text below!

The dark ship drove hard and fast, driven by hellwinds to crush the little sailboat into flotsam.

“What will we do?” Pyg despaired. There was no hope of maneuvering out of the way, and Pyg had never learned to swim.

“We have to jump!” Leap answered. “Climb onto my back, and I’ll carry you!”

There was no time think beyond those precious seconds. The pair dove into the inky black sea with naught but a prayer as the demon vessel obliterated their pitiful craft. But where would they go now? They could not swim forever, both of them knew. Their food was gone, and without a boat, they were destined to drown.

By miracle or design, Pyg noticed a rope trailing in the water from the side of the ship. Without another thought, she grabbed it as it passed and hoisted herself up.

“What are you doing?” Leap shouted. “Don’t you know what’s up there?”

“Maybe we’ll die if we go up there,” Pyg called back, “but we definitely will if we don’t! Come on!”

Up they climbed, brutalized by sudden winds, the freezing sea spray lashing their faces. At long last, they reached the top, threw themselves over the side of the ship and fell, exhausted, onto the sodden deck.

At first, there was no sign of anything living or dead. For a moment, Pyg and Leap held hope that their eyes had deceived them in the mist. Here, the weather was calm. Dark, yes, but quiet. The ship’s bell clanged solemnly with the motion of the sea. Its wasted sails idly flapped. Taut ropes groaned. Wet wood creaked. And Pyg thought, this is the sound of aloneness.

And then the fog rolled in again. Between every wispy tendril of mist, shapes formed and faded and formed anew. Shapes like the creatures Pyg had once seen in a dream. The hairless creatures. The true masters of this ship. No longer could Pyg doubt the existence of the Ghosts of Men. They stood before her, looking at her without eyes, threatening without tongues. And there were hundreds of them.

“I think I made a mistake,” Pyg whispered.

“Probably not as bad as the one I’m about to make,” said Leap.

Then he stood up, and after a moment’s hesitation, walked directly to the dead men.

“Leap!” Pyg cried. “No!”

31 Days of Halloween #12

The Goosemother Scroll - Episode 6 Text below for the readers.

A wolf. Here in this so-called safehaven. A wolf walking through the curtain at that very moment! And no one screamed or ran. Father Longtail was saying something to Pyg, but she couldn’t make sense of his words at first. All she could think was run. She must have been a frightening sight to behold, for the wolf’s ears fell back, and his tail ducked between his legs.

“I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I’ll...  I’ll come back another time.”

Somehow Pyg got her legs working again, and she scrambled to the only place she could think to. Under the bed.

“Oh my,” said Father Longtail. “Perhaps you’re right, my boy. Let us give her a bit more time.”

It was only when Father Longtail returned hours later, promising her the wolf was gone, that Pyg came out to curl up wearily in the chair.

“I am sorry for the shock,” said the eldermouse. “Leap has been with us for long enough that I sometimes forget he is wolfkind at all.”

“You mean, he lives here?” Pyg asked in horror.

Father Longtail smiled. “Not every wolf is bad, my dear,” he said. “Some are, yes, but just as many are not. You lost much of your family to the very bad ones, I know. You may be surprised to learn that Leap did as well.”

Pyg remained silent, but she was listening.

“In fact,” Longtail continued, “he was brought to us near death in much the same way you were. Terrified. Alone. Having watched his parents die by the tooth and claw of the Legion. And like you, he is still a child! Even so, he has recovered remarkably well! He is too young to become a brother, but he helps us track the Legion and find survivors in their wake. That is how we came by you, my dear.”

Pyg felt very ashamed and agreed, after being assured of no ill feelings, to meet the young wolf again.

“It’s all right,” Leap assured her, tail ever so slightly wagging. “I’m sorry for scaring you. I just heard that you wanted to go home, and I thought... Well, I thought maybe I could help! I can run pretty fast and Brother Jackalbeard says my teeth are as strong as any he’s ever seen. He’s seen all kinds of teeth!”

He grinned, showing ferocious fangs. Pyg gulped and smiled nervously in return.

“That is very kind of you, Leap,” said Father Longtail, “but I’m afraid no good will be served by sending either of you back that treacherous way. I certainly cannot stop you, but if you must leave the abbey at all, I would much rather you go another way. It will not take you to your mother, little pigling, but you will be much more helpful to her and to all beastkind if you will hear what I have to say.”

The eldermouse invited the wolf and pig to sit, and when they did, he began to explain. The Shadow Bringer’s forces grew greater by the day, he told them. His soldiers left a trail of blood wherever they went, and soon the world would drown in it. A few kings had tried to rise against him, but they had been defeated, and now many had given up their authority to join with him. But far across the Wide Sea lay the Elephant Lands where the mightiest of beastkind lived. It seemed they had not yet been touched by the evil of the Master. Longtail and the other elders wondered if they knew of the strife in their lands at all.

“The Rhinoceros King has always been a friend to the order,” said Longtail. “If we could only reach him, his army and those of his allies might stand a chance against the evildoer. But we cannot trust the gulls to carry our messages anymore. Too many of them have betrayed us.”

Pyg swallowed hard. “You want us to deliver a message,” she said.

Longtail shrugged. “We need someone to. Only... no one has been brave enough.”

Pyg looked to Leap. “If it would mean the end of the killing...” she said.

“I’ll protect you no matter which way you choose to go,” offered Leap.

And that was how wolf and piglet came to find themselves together on a tiny sailboat in the dark of night. With only a lantern, some fresh water, and some turnips to live on, they sailed alone for the Elephant Lands. They knew not what they would find, but hope for what lay ahead was far better than the dread of what lay behind.

Until a dark, hulking figure appeared through the mists on the moonlit horizon. It was massive. A behemoth of rotten wood and rags. Despite a gaping wound in her starboard side, she raced, tall and threatening, toward them. Ragged sails hung lifeless from skeletal masts, but the ship was alive. Alive with the Ghosts of Men.

31 Days of Halloween #10

Some slight relief from all the tragedy. ;-) The Goosemother Scroll - Episode 5

Text below.

Pyg fainted and dreamed terrors. Nightmares of strange symbols spelled out in her brothers’ blood. Of tall, hairless creatures with large, rat-like claws. Of shadows that sucked her in like quicksand.

But it was a prickly, tickly feeling that finally woke her. It felt like a dozen tiny hairs were brushing just-so against her cheek. Pyg opened her eyes to a dim orange light and saw, perched upon her nose, a mouse in a long gray robe.

“Ah! Awake at last. Good, good!” the mouse said pleasantly. His whiskers twitched as he smiled. “I was beginning to worry!”

The mouse felt around her snout with his paws as if unsure and then hopped down beside her upon the bed. How Pyg wound up in a bed, she didn’t know, but she hadn’t the will to ask any questions now. She saw that her bed was in a humble, cavelike room lighted by candles. Instead of walls, there were dull brown curtains, and she suspected by the sounds outside that her little curtained room was one of many.

“Brother Redfern!” the mouse called to someone out of sight. “I have good news! Our patient has woken up. She’ll be needing some hot dandelion tea, I should think. And bring that, uh, scrap of cloth, if you will.”

The mouse turned back to her. “Now, let’s see here. I am Father Longtail. Do you know where you are?” he asked gently and then, chuckling to himself, answered his own question. “No, no, of course you wouldn’t. You, my dear, are in the hospital of the Southtunnel Abbey.”

Pyg finally found her voice. “Are you an eldermouse?” she asked in amazement, but then a small white fox with ears like wings came through the curtain, carrying a cup of steaming tea, which he placed on the table beside her bed. Next to the tea, he slipped a torn piece of white fabric. Pyg noticed a spot of what looked like blood on it. The fox’s voice interrupted her thoughts.

“Father Longtail is not simply an eldermouse,” he told her. “He’s one of the Blind Brothers! The Goosemother herself took their sight to keep them from evil and in exchange granted them extraordinary wisdom!”

“Thank you, Brother Redfern, that will be all,” said the eldermouse. To Pyg he shook his head.  “Bless them! The stories they tell themselves! My sight was taken by a brain fever when I was still a pup. What else is a blind mouse to do but join the safety of the abbey? The Goosemother didn’t make me a fool. Such is the life for most of us down here. We cannot, for one reason or another, serve the world above, and so we go below.”

“Oh,” said Pyg, still thinking about the cloth. But then Longtail became very serious, and Pyg feared what he had to say.

“You’re a very lucky pigling, you are,” said the mouse. “We found you on cursed ground where the Ghosts of Men are known to rise. With so much blood spilled, it’s a wonder they didn’t find you before we did. I am sorry about your brothers. They were your brothers, were they not? We have buried their remains.”

It pained Pyg to think of her brothers, but she had no tears left to cry. “I didn’t think the Ghosts of Men were real,” she said quietly.

“They are very real, and very dangerous!” said Longtail. “More dangerous than the wolves who attacked you. Their fear of the Ghosts is likely why they did not stay to kill you.”

“How did you know it was wolves?” asked Pyg.

“There is no mistaking their work, pigling,” Longtail told her. “But there was also this bit of cloth left behind. The one I asked Brother Redfern to bring. Take it, please, and tell me what you see.”

Pyg took the cloth with the blood spot and examined it up close. Embroidered on one corner was a strange insigne showing a black claw with its reverse in gray below it like a shadow.

“The symbol of the Master’s Legion,” Longtail explained, “a vast army of wicked beasts spreading across the world like a plague. They follow the orders of a king they call Master. We do not know him, but it is at his command they kill and torture and destroy. From the stories I hear, his power is increasing. Do you know the Scroll, child?”

Pyg nodded.

“Then you know whom we fear has come.”

“You mean the Shadow Bringer, don’t you?” asked Pyg. She felt the hairs of her chin stand up.

“We see no other possibility,” said Longtail.

Pyg immediately threw the blankets off and sprang from the bed. She found her cloak across a chair and put it on at once.

“Where are you going, pigling?” asked Longtail.

“I have to get back home,” Pyg answered. “My mother is all alone!”

“And you think you can defend her against the Shadow Bringer yourself?” asked Longtail. “No, little pigling. You must not go home now. The way back is crawling with evil, and though you may be brave, you are but one, and you have no weapons. Not even claws.”

“But I can’t just leave her there!” Pyg protested. “I have to try!”

“Listen to me, Child,” said Longtail. “It was no accident that you survived. You were meant to come to us. Perhaps not to overthrow the Shadow Bringer yourself, but each of us plays his part.”

“My part is played at home now,” Pyg insisted. “Thank you for taking care of me, but I have to go.”

Pyg marched toward the curtain but didn’t make it far before a blood-curdling sight stopped her in her tracks. Showing through the curtain fabric was a silhouette she feared above all others. Had her throat not been choked by mortal dread, she would have screamed.

31 Days of Halloween #8

The Goosemother Scroll Episode 4Text below for those who'd like to read along.

There were only seconds to make a decision, but three decisions were made, and only one was wise.

Pyg looked behind her and saw a brick stove in the corner. “This way!” she mouthed to her brothers and ran to it, climbing up inside the chimney just far enough to stay out of sight.

Strongheart followed her until he spied some forgotten kindling off to the side. He grabbed a stick from it and broke it over his knee, making a crude spear. Then he crouched in the shadow of the stove and waited.

Meekfoot panicked. He spun this way and that way until he found a pile of straw much closer to himself than the stove and dove underneath it just as the creatures from the attic arrived.

What are they doing? Pyg wondered of her brothers, but she was afraid to look lest she attract attention, and the creatures were much too close. She could hear them. There were so many! The floorboards creaked from their weight, and they had claws that tapped upon the wood as they moved. They panted like dogs, and she could hear the wet sound of tongues as they licked their chops. Wolves. They had to be!

“My, oh, my!” said one of them. His voice was rough and deep. “I am so very hungry. Wouldn’t it be lovely if we had ourselves some fat little piggies right about now?”

The others laughed in their snarling way.

“Yes, indeed!” the first continued. “And wouldn’t it be even lovelier if there were a plump little piggy just waiting for us...”

He moved past the stove.

“Right...”

He was at the straw pile.

“HERE!”

Pyg heard Meekfoot squeal in terror as he was dragged out from his hiding place. Then there was a horrible sound like a snapping of twigs, and Meek squealed no more. Pyg wanted to cry, but she couldn’t even breathe. At times she thought she’d lose her grip and fall right out of the chimney.

“This one’s for you boys,” said the first wolf. “I believe I spotted at least two more with him. Find them. Why, I’m so hungry I could eat an entire family of fat little piggies!”

“Yes, sir, Captain, sir,” said one of the other wolves. Pyg could hear their noses working at the air, and she knew it would only be a matter of time before they found her out.

But Strongheart had other plans. He jumped out from his hiding place, brandishing his pathetic spear.

“Think you can gobble me up? You’ve got another thing coming!” he threatened to much laughter. He fought bravely for being so defenseless, but his bravery merely delayed his inevitable and gruesome end.

Pyg felt the world spin around her. She could barely hear a sound beyond her heart pounding in her ears, but she thought she heard one of the wolves say, “There’s too much blood, sir. We shouldn’t stay in this place.”

“Yes, I think you’re right,” agreed the one they called Captain. “Boys! Time to move out!”

There was snarling and howling and other frightful noises, and then those sounds grew further away until there was nothing. Not a whisper. Not even the gossip of crickets.

31 Days of Halloween #6

The Goosemother Scroll Episode 3 Text below for those who'd like to read along.

In spite of the tragedy that marked the three little pigs’ birthdays, their childhoods were as happy as any pig’s could be. And though they lived in desperate poverty, their home was always rich with love.

That isn’t to say their lives were easy.

Strongheart was always getting himself into scraps with the boys from the village. He swore he always fought fair, but Mother wished he wouldn’t fight at all. “It’s just... the things they say about us, Mother!” Strong would insist. “Are only words,” Mother would finish. And Strong would feel awful for a day or two, but he would be back at it soon enough.

Meekfoot was a sweet boy, but the poor child was afraid of his own tail. He wouldn’t play with other children. He wouldn’t even go out into the garden by himself. “Ah, my dear Meek,” Mother would say to herself. “If only he were a little more like his brother, and his brother a little more like him.”

The daughter was nothing like either of her brothers. For one, she had never been given a proper name, for all her mother’s joy was gone by the time she remembered to name her. She was simply called Pyg.

Pyg did not mind her namelessness. She was no less loved by her mother and brothers. The only trouble about it was that having no name meant everyone else called her something different, and it was hard to keep it all straight. To the teacher who sometimes visited from the village, Pyg was Miss Snout-in-a-book, for she was nearly always reading. To the shopkeeper who bought her mother’s truffles from her, she was Old Sage Ears, for she seemed so much wiser than other children her age. To many others, she was Our Blessing. For everyone remembered the night she was nearly taken away, though no one liked to talk of the brother who was.

The little family in the cottage did the best they could, and they were very happy. But trouble was spreading all across the land. There was talk of wars in nearby kingdoms, and food became more expensive. The Hog King imposed new taxes, too, and soon no one could buy Mother’s truffles.

“I can no longer provide for you, my piglets,” Mother cried one day. “You will fair better out in the world where you may find some work to support yourselves. Promise me you’ll watch over each other, dear loves! My poor heart could not bear to lose you forever!”

Strongheart vowed no one would hurt his siblings without taking him out first. Meekfoot sobbed but swore he’d try to be brave. Pyg promised she’d keep her brothers out of trouble. And then the three set out upon the road, heavy-hearted but hopeful, to find their fortune.

A few miles from home, they found an abandoned farm on which to rest for the night.

“How lucky we are!” said Strongheart. “I thought we’d have to sleep in the grass.” “Perhaps we could stay here forever!” said Meekfoot though he knew that wasn’t possible.

Pyg was about to say something when a sound caught her attention. A creaking sound, coming from above them within the farmhouse.

“Somebody’s here!” Meekfoot whimpered.

Not just one somebody, but a dozen, and each with long claws that went click-click-click as they descended the stairs from the attic where they had been waiting for a meal to come wandering in.